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lunarmoves · 2 months

Text

through pixel eyes (chapter one)

pairing: DCA sun/moon/eclipse x reader

mentions: kinitopet/virtual au, gender neutral reader, general creepiness

a/n: ignoring that it's 3am where i am... ch1's finally here! yippee!! ending is rushed but im tired so excuse it LOL pls check out the masterlist for more info on the fic (tags & summary). hope u guys enjoy! :D

word count: 5.3k+

masterlist

ao3 link

Click. Click. Taptap tap tap. Click.

You chew aimlessly at the bottom of your lip as your mouse roves over to the latest email in your inbox, opening it with another decisive click. Perking up slightly, your eyes skim through its contents, mindful of the zip file attached to it at the top.

Valued employee, the email reads, thank you again for your decision to assist Fazbear Entertainment in the latest beta testing stages for our developing proprietary technology. Attached is the file you are required to download to begin testing. As always, be mindful of the documentation you have signed previously; a failure to comply will result in immediate termination. Located at the bottom of this email is the submission form you will need to populate each time you conduct a run. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to reply to this email. Have a Faz-errific day!

You hum and scroll back to the top of the email again so you can look at the attached file. FazPals1.1_DCA.zip, it says. You click the download button, then lean back in your chair as you wait.

For being such a large company, FazCo has a rather small beta testing team. You suppose it makes sense, though; their technology is so unparalleled that you are sure they’d want to keep information as closed off as possible. Hence why you’d been forced to sign all matters of forms—contracts, an N.D.A., and waivers, of all things—before they’d signed you on. You’re sure they are even more restrictive with their information after the pizzaplex burned down all those years ago. You’re lucky you’d managed to slither your way into their ranks to make the beta team, though you figure it helps that your resume is stacked with experience.

You are certainly curious as to what they’ve been doing while they parade assurances that the pizzaplex will return “better than ever.” You have a vague idea from your past emails with management as you were being incorporated into the beta testing team—some kind of interactive game of sorts, you think—but they’ve been rather hush-hush about it. Your answer resides in the zip file that’s just finished downloading to your computer. You navigate to your file explorer and begin the extraction process for the files. Luckily, it doesn’t take too long. You scratch idly behind your ear, shifting your headphones a little to rest more comfortably atop your head.

Okay. File open. Where is the— There! You double click on the FazPals_DCA.exe file to run it and begin installation. A brief glance at the time shows it is a little after six in the evening. You have quite a bit of time before you’ll need to head to bed. You’ll see how far into the program you get before you hit a checkpoint or something.

You watch as a tiny pink and white bear on the installation window flips a pizza over and over while the progress bar steadily inches its way to full completion. It is oddly hypnotizing. And when the program finally finishes installing, the window closes. An icon of a cool crescent moon tucked into the burning yellow of a sun appears on your desktop and is labeled as FazPals. Nice. Thank you, fast WiFi. Without much preamble, you double click on the icon.

A small window pops up in the middle of your screen. You glance through the text quickly.

Welcome to version 1.1 of FazPals, your very own virtual desktop friend based on the hit characters from Fazbear Entertainment's Mega Pizzaplex! They are able to walk, talk, joke, tell stories, give fun facts, adapt, and play games! FazPals are like no other with their innovative adaptive technology! You'll learn from them as they learn from you!

Click the button below if you are ready to meet your new FazPal!

Not what you’d been expecting, but it sounds pretty cool. It reminds you of the Tamagotchis from all those years ago—only with the A.I. of Fazbear-branded technology. Well! No time like the present! You click the ‘Proceed’ button and the window closes.

In the center of your screen, a small music box appears. It’s an unassuming little thing, wrapped in yellow with a red ribbon crossing over it to tie into a neat bow at the top. A crank awaits your click, so you do just that, watching as it rotates around and around until— Pop! The box opens and something jumps out of it with a flourish and a jingle of bells that echoes through your headset.

The box disappears and you’re left to stare curiously at the little figure swaying animatedly on your desktop. He seems to look around a bit, then a small dialogue box flashes over his head. But before you can read its contents, the box disappears in a static puff. You cock your head slightly. A glitch, maybe? You file that away for later and instead observe the tiny, taut grin of the program. Your FazPal, or whatever.

You recognize him from the pizzaplex commercials you’d seen on the television years ago—the Daycare Attendant. A fellow—fellows?—modeled after celestial bodies. You’re looking at the sun, currently, though his design is a bit different from what you remember seeing.

Before you can get a good look at him, however, another dialogue box pops up over his head with text accompanying a voice that chirps into your headset. You are momentarily surprised at the sound; you hadn’t expected FazCo to incorporate their voice module into the program too.

“Hellooo, New Friend!” Sun exclaims in a slightly pixelated manner—hardly noticeable, really—as he waves a small hand. “My name is Sun, your very own F-FazPal!” There’s a slight glitch on the word that makes his voice deepen slightly, but it passes easily enough. “What’s your name?”

Following his question, a window labeled ‘Name?’ pops up to his side with a textbox for you to input your answer. Figuring he isn’t going to proceed with his script until you type your answer, you take the moment to properly analyze his design.

Detached sunrays of white and gold hover around his head, framing bright eyes and an equally as bright smile on a face split into a crescent. He’s rather lithe, with a red sash tied around his waist that’s adorned with small, golden bells. Another bell is tied around his spindly neck with a red ribbon, and those same ribbons are tied around his wrists. His torso is bare and colored in different shades of yellow. Puffy red pants cover his legs—triangularly shaped with sharp lines and edges. They are decorated in a design that reminds you of the circuitry of a motherboard—dissecting lines connected by small circles that start from his waist and make their way down the length of his pants in a trickle. Pointy shoes with little suns on their sides finish the look.

He is all angles and unforgiving points, with a digitized sort of look to him that fits the whole ‘FazPal’ aesthetic, in your opinion. It’s certainly interesting. You like the futuristic feel to it.

Pulling yourself back to the present, you type in your name. Sun has his arms crossed behind his back as he waits, swaying gently side to side. You hit enter and the window disappears.

“Lovely name!” Sun chirps, his rays spinning around his head eagerly that you eye in interest. They look like floating pieces of fractured, stained glass, dainty yet deadly. “I’m sure we are going to be the bestest best friends!” You snort at the declaration.

“To start our little quest of friendship,” Sun continues on, his head moving towards the dialogue box that pops up near him like he’s looking at it, eyes narrow. It’s honestly difficult to tell with that blank gaze of his. He returns his gaze to the front, where his eyes upturn into little crescents. “Why don’t we get to know each other? Sound good?”

Another window appears with two simple buttons sitting next to each other under it: A ‘Yes’ and a ‘No’. You click the ‘Yes’ and Sun gives an excited little clap of his hands. It’s cute, in a way. “Wonderful! Okay! To start, what iiisss your favorite color?” The open window closes, then reopens to a textbox again with the new question displayed at the top. You hum and tap your chin thoughtfully, then let your fingers fly across your keyboard as you type the color in.

You pause, however, before you hit enter and decide to tack on a ‘hbu?’ to your response. If only to satisfy your curiosity and really test the limits of FazCo’s ingenious A.I. Hey, you’re a beta tester—it speaks for itself!

Sun grins even wider, if possible. “That’s a good one! As for me…” He makes a thinking gesture, eyes narrowing like he’s contemplating it deeply, then brightens up. No, literally. A lightbulb appears over his head for a quick moment. “I like all the colors, it’s so hard to choose just one! Normally, I just say ‘rainbow’!” He makes a little semicircle gesture with his hands around his head. Little pixelated sparkles wink into and out of existence near his fingers before he clasps his hands behind him once more. You’ve got to hand it to FazCo—they certainly know how to add some flair to their characters. “Next question! If you could have any superpower ever, what would it be?”

You chew at your lip again as you lean back in your chair and ponder his question. Why is it when people ask you these kinds of questions you always blank on the answers? Sun is ever so patient as he waits, moving in that idle animation next to the open window.

Ah well, it’s not like you’re answering an interview question or anything. You wing it. ‘probably invisibility, or something. hbu?’ And enter.

“Ooh! Invisibility!” Sun nods like he’s giving his approval. “Good in the right hands! I would want the power to read minds, I think! All the better for making fantastic friends!”

You make a small sound at that. Well, you suppose that’s one way to make friends, albeit not a very… stable foundation to base a friendship off of. Sun proceeds with his next question. “This one’s a bit of a tough one! What’s your favorite word?”

‘Tough’ is an understatement. You’re stumped. You rake through your mind for a word and draw up nothing but blanks. You’re certain you have one, but you just cannot think of it at the moment. Shrugging, you type ‘idk. i can't think of one rn, sorry. do u have one?’

His head cocks to the side, grin curling at the edges. “That’s more than one word, New Friend!” Sun replies amusedly, then laughs—a loud, tinkering thing that cuts off a bit strangely at its end. “Kidding! I’ll let you off easy for that one!” He is quite good at adapting to your responses, you note lightly. Very intriguing. You wonder how that’s coded. “My favorite word is supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!” You blink in surprise. The dialogue box is barely able to hold the word inside of it. You didn’t quite expect him to say that, of all words, though you guess it makes sense for him. Sun doesn’t elaborate, just transitions merrily through the next part of his script. “Now, for this question, I need you to be as detailed as possible, okay? It is”—he pauses for a second—“essential.”

You nod, but it’s not like he can see you, so you end up looking like a fool. Sun stares straight ahead and it… it feels a bit like he’s looking directly at you. You shift uneasily in your seat and watch his eyes go dark along with his white rays and wide smile. Abyss-like. Something drops in the pit of your stomach at the abrupt switch. His smile widens. It cracks like he’s on the edge of something hysterical. And when he speaks, it’s in a low, garbled voice that grates at your ears.

“Where.” He grits out. “Are—”

He doesn’t get the chance to finish. A glitch encompasses his body that makes his rays twitch erratically and his limbs to jitter about like he’s being electrocuted. You jerk back out of surprise and consider exiting the hell out of the program. But then he’s back to normal like nothing had ever happened. White eyes stare up at you with an equally as white smile.

“Oh!” Sun exclaims cheerfully, swaying about gently. You’re taken aback and, quite frankly, confused out of your goddamn mind. “Silly me, look at the time! I’m afraid our friendship will have to wait! There’s someone else who’d like to meet you!”

“What.” You utter the word mindlessly, eyes flicking down to the time on your computer. 6:59 P.M. Time sure did fly by through all of… that. You’re not entirely sure what to think of it.

“Talk to you soon, New Friend!” Sun waves a hand in farewell, then spins himself around in a little animated tornado. You can only stare, oddly transfixed and still utterly flummoxed, as he spins around, and around, and around until the clock changes to 7:00 P.M. and he slows to an elegant stop.

Only, it’s not Sun you’re looking at anymore.

The rays are gone, replaced with a nightcap covering his head that’s adorned with twinkling stars and a little bell at the end. All the yellows have shifted to greys, blues, and blacks, though he still retains the golden bells, red ribbons, and red sash. His pants are a midnight blue with the same circuitry design, and his shoes now have little moons etched into them instead of suns.

This must be the moon, you conclude once you’re done observing him. The other half to the Daycare Attendant you remember seeing via advertisement—the one who’d been in charge of naptime.

You watch as Moon seems to look around. You’re not sure what he’s looking at, but you can only wait. Gentle ruby eyes move from your desktop icons to the open window that Sun had been standing next to. His smile turns jagged like the outline of a mountain. And then—

And then he slinks away, disappearing straight off of your monitor without a second look. You’re left staring at the open window, the cursor still blinking in the textbox and awaiting your input. What… just happened? You blink at where he’d disappeared off screen and wait a few moments. But he doesn’t come back.

What the hell?

Five minutes turns into ten, which turns into fifteen and then twenty, but he truly does not return. You’re stupefied.

Maybe you should restart the program? You nibble at your lower lip and right click on the FazPals icon so you can end it and then boot it back up again. Your mouse turns into that loading circle of death, and you swear you’re not holding your breath in anticipation or anything, but it sure does feel like it.

Loading… loading… loading…

…

Nothing. Zip, zilch, nada. Moon does not appear. You groan and scratch at your ear again, shifting your headphones. Day one of testing and you’ve already run into a problem. Great. Well, it wasn’t like you’d expected everything to be smooth sailing. Still annoying, though. Just in case, you try restarting your computer.

It doesn’t yield any results either, and you end up just watching some videos as you wait to see if the bug will magically fix itself. Spoiler alert, it doesn’t and you eventually give up as the clock ticks closer to midnight.

But well—you think as you slowly pull up the submission form FazCo had sent you for your job to fill out—you suppose this is why the program’s still in the testing phase. It obviously has some kinks that need to be ironed out. Hopefully it’ll get fixed up in the next patch update. Until then, you’ll just have to deal with it.

A benefit of working from home? You get to set your own schedule. A blessing, at times.

That unfortunately means you have to stick to it while ensuring you’re properly taking care of yourself, and going outside to get fresh air, and also getting all the necessary work done on time, and also—

Well, you get the point.

You wake up groggy the next day and stumble your way out of your room, just barely managing to step over the little Roomba aimlessly bumbling down the small hallway. At one point it was another product you were testing, but then it was given the green flag for mass production and admission to stores. The company let you keep the one they sent you. It was a little finicky, but it worked just fine. You named it Chicken Nugget a while ago—Dr. Nugget for short, because a Roomba with a PhD was just too amusing to pass up. You’re still musing over what area its PhD is in.

There is much to be done. Dishes from last night need to be washed, food needs to be prepared to last you a few days, timesheets need to be filled out before you forget your hours. It’s easy to multitask on household chores while you do your job. You're on the beta testing team for quite a few companies, so you’re kept busy evaluating their programs and products while you julienne onions and clean plates. You earn enough to live comfortably, and it’s all you can ever ask for, really.

Eventually, after a long day of being a responsible human being and submitting numerous evaluation forms for various applications, you plop down in front of your computer with your headphones and turn it on. Evening has just started to creep in, turning the sky into a picturesque gradient of burnt mandarin and dusty magenta. Your desk is right by a window, so it’s nice to draw the curtains back and let fresh air circulate around the room from it.

Alright, computer on. You type in your password to log in and wait as it finishes booting up. First thing on your list—check your email. There’s nothing of importance, not that you’d expected anything, really. Oh hey, you’ve got a discount code for your next purchase at your favorite pizza store. Sweet. You save it for later.

All you have to do is test FazCo’s program and then you can relax for the rest of the night. You preemptively open up their submission form and minimize the window, then double click on the FazPals icon. Hopefully you won’t run into any problems. Code is weird like that—working perfectly fine at one moment and doing fuck all the next. And it’s always a pain filling those surveys out when there’s an abundance of bugs and glitches to point out. It’s simple, but oh so tedious. You guess that’s what you’re getting paid for, though.

Blinking back to attention, you squint at your empty desktop then double click on the FazPals icon again. Ah, there you go. Loading symbol.

Instead of the little music box like you’d been expecting, Sun comes into view by cartwheeling in from the side of your monitor. It’s silly and you smile slightly as he jumps up to his feet and splays his arms and a leg out wide like he’s about to fall into another cartwheel.

“New Friend!” he exclaims loudly alongside the text in his dialogue box, rays spinning rapidly about his head in delight. You wince slightly and lower your volume a bit. No need to kill your eardrums. “You’re back! It has been twenty-two hours, nine minutes, and thirty-seven seconds since we last interacted!”

Your brow raises at his precision, but what else did you expect from a computer program? Sun relaxes into his normal stance and leans forward eagerly. “So! What do you wanna do?” A small, labeled window pops up next to him for you to type in. One of his rays twitches slightly. “For a list of activities I can perform, type ‘/help’!”

You’ve already forgotten what he can do other than walk around and talk your ear off, so you do just that and the window disappears. You didn’t even have to hit enter.

Sun beams. “For your present and future reference, I can tell jokes, give fun facts, play games, and storytell! Pick your poison, New Friend!”

You ponder for a bit, then type ‘can u tell me a fun fact?’ in the new window before it pops out of sight, again before you can press enter. Huh. You make a note of it mentally. The back and forth with the windows is going to take some getting used to.

“I sure can!” Sun does a little wiggle and stands at full attention with his arms crossed behind his back. “Did you know that neutron stars spin six hundred times per second? Pretty cool!” He seems very cheery today. You’ll have to keep an eye out for any more of that strange glitching from yesterday. “Want another one?”

Eh, you don’t see why not. You shrug and click the ‘Yes’ button when it appears. Sun gives a little salute. “The most water ever discovered surrounds a black hole about twelve billion lightyears away! It has the equivalent of one hundred and forty trillion times the volume of Earth’s oceans!” You’re starting to see a theme here with his fun facts and it honestly checks out. Sun’s rays spin a little to the right as he tilts his head slightly. “That was two facts in one, technically. Just for you! Don’t tell anyone!!” And then he winks, accompanied by a little star spinning out from his eye. It’s a small detail, but it still makes you smile. Consider you charmed.

“Alrighty! I have an idea of what we can do next!” Sun says as he skips away to the edge of your monitor. You watch him curiously as he sticks a hand beyond your desktop—somewhere offscreen?—and starts pulling over a large open window from it. Like he’s unraveling a spool of paper. He drags the window over to the center of your screen, then wipes his face with his arm and takes an exaggerated breath. “Phew! That’s heavier than it looks! Luckily, I’ve got these to help me!” He flexes his stick-like arms dramatically, posing this way and that like he’s a pro wrestler.

You notice, as he poses, that another small window pops up—indistinct and unlabeled this time with a simple textbox for you to type in. But he… didn’t really ask you a question or anything of the sorts for you to respond to? You eye it for a moment, then decide to type a little ‘hi’ in it to see if it’s a bug or something. After waiting a few seconds to see if the window will close again without you hitting enter, nothing really happens. Oh, is it fixed now? You hit enter and the text disappears, but the window stays. You guess it is. Code, man. So finicky.

Sun stops flexing to shoot you a bright beam with a spin of his rays. “Hello!”

Okay, maybe it’s not a bug if he can still process your texts. Shrugging it off easily, you turn your attention to the window Sun had pulled over from who-knows-where. It looks like your computer’s Paint app. How did he open that? ‘what’s that for?’ you type into the textbox.

“This is for us to play some games, silly!” Sun brandishes his hands towards the Paint window like he’s presenting a masterpiece. “How does Tic-Tac-Toe sound?”

Well, not like you have any other ideas for what to do. ‘sure, let’s play.’

“Faz-tastic!” Sun claps his hands, then reaches into his pocket and pulls out a comically large wooden pencil from its depths. Seriously, it’s nearly the length of his arm. It’s like something right out of a cartoon and you grin at the silliness. He steps closer to the Paint window and draws four perfectly straight and intersecting lines—each of them the same length and splitting into the same sized boxes and everything. He then draws a perfect circle in one of the corner boxes and steps back. “Your turn!”

You crack your knuckles and roll your shoulders. Okay. Time to lock in and kick this program’s ass.

Except you don’t.

You lose horribly. Seven times in a row, in fact.

‘r u cheating? ur cheating, aren’t u,’ you type into the open textbox, which had remained in place all throughout your games. Unusual, but you’re not too bothered by it. After you lost the first few rounds, you started complaining to him using it. You figured you might as well. It’s almost like having a conversation with him and you’re pretty impressed by his verbal versatility.

“Cheating?!” Sun squawks, offended. He splays a hand across his chest as he somehow manages to twirl his giant pencil in his hand like a baton. “A rulebreaker, I am not! I think someone is getting a little grumpy!” He gives you a pointed grin.

You should have expected you’d lose to fucking A.I. software. You run your tongue over your bottom lip, where you’d been incessantly troubling it with your teeth throughout the rather merciless Tic-Tac-Toe beating you’d just received. You’re considering mentioning in the submission form that the program is too difficult to beat at games, but maybe you’re just that bad at them. Your ego’s definitely going through it.

‘i’m not grumpy,’ you grumble. Sun shakes his little digital head in good mirth, seeing right through you, of course. You switch topics. ‘let’s play something else. got any other games?’

“I sure do, Friend!” He uses his pencil eraser to clear the Paint canvas and starts drawing what looks like a game of Hangman. He gives you a sly smile. “Think you’re up for a real challenge?” Cheeky!

After some rounds of Hangman and Pictionary (which, to your pleasant surprise, you’re not too bad at, but maybe Sun’s taking pity on you), Sun eventually closes the Paint window and makes a show of stretching languidly. “My time’s almost up, I’m afraid!” Sure enough, a quick glance at the time shows it’s nearing seven o’clock. Time flies when you’re having fun. “Make sure to stretch your back and arms out, Friend! Hydration is also important!”

‘yes boss, u got it, boss,’ you reply before stretching out your arms. You have a water bottle on your desk that you take a quick drink out of, the liquid inside of the insulated material still cool and refreshing. You shiver a little and eye your window still letting the night air into the room. You should close that soon. And maybe turn on the lights so you’re not sitting in the dark illuminated only by your bright screen.

Naturally, you do neither. Too much work right now.

Sun wiggles a little, then clasps his arms behind his back. “This was fun! I will talk to you tomorrow, Friend!” His grin widens, curling at the edges. “Don’t keep me waiting too long!”

And before you can really process the tone of that, he pulls out a red curtain from somewhere behind him. Shaking it out slightly, he pulls it up in front of him to block your view of his little figure entirely. You raise an eyebrow as the curtain wiggles and protrudes out like he’s changing into new clothes, before eventually it falls down and reveals Moon. His nightcap is pulled down to partially cover his glowing ruby eyes.

You lean forward in your chair, attention instantly grabbed. Will he work properly this time? You consider him for a moment as he simply stands there—sullen and, dare you say, annoyed. His eyes are narrowed and his mouth is pulled into a scowl. He shifts like he wants to move or leave, but something keeps him rooted into the same spot Sun was just in. His hands are tucked into the pockets of his pants (he has pockets??) and he slouches like a puppet cut from its strings.

He’s not saying anything. Only glares off at a point somewhere on your screen. You bite the inside of your cheek and decide to take one for the (nonexistent) team.

‘hi moon,’ you type into the textbox that’d remained even after Sun left. Pressing enter, you watch curiously as something tense seems to line Moon’s small shoulders and he moves his glare to the open window instead.

His head twitches. “Hi,” he replies slowly in a raspy voice. It’s not what you’d expected, low and murmured like he’s speaking to someone in a dark and quiet corner. His gaze darts to the dialogue box that pops up next to his head and seems to narrow even farther.

Oookay. He doesn’t say anything else. Is he still bugged or is he just programmed to be much quieter than Sun? You’re not sure if that makes sense for this type of program, though. You try to nudge the conversation again, thinking back to the list of commands Sun gave you earlier. ‘can u tell me a joke?’

Moon seems to look at you and it’s just as creepy as it had been when Sun did it. His scowl deepens. “No.”

You’re taken aback. No? Oh. Well. Maybe you should try something else? ‘can u tell me a fun fact?’ At least you know this command works for certain.

“No.”

It’s like pulling teeth over here.

You’re determined, however. This is your entire job. ‘what about a story?’

“No.” Moon bares knife-like teeth at you in aggravation and you’re tempted to do the same thing back. He doesn’t want to do anything! Something is definitely… off. You make a note of it to include in the submission form later. At least he hasn’t left your screen. You’ll take the win where you can.

You’re stumped on what to do. The only thing you can think of is to keep inputting commands until something gives. Maybe things will sort themselves out? You try asking for a fun fact or joke again, but Moon still just scowls and answers in that same clipped manner. His fidgeting seems to increase.

You’re getting close to calling it quits. ‘why don’t we play a game or something? tic-tac-toe?’

“P-Persistent little thing,” Moon growls into your headset and it’s such a reprieve from the constant rejections that you’re not even offended. You perk up slightly only to deflate at his following words. “Didn’t anyone teach you that ‘no’ means no?”

‘no,’ you type as a response—partly in annoyance and partly just to be snarky. Moon twitches again, and then in the blink of an eye—he glitches.

Similar to Sun, it spreads down his body in a wave and makes him jitter until he snaps back into place like a rubber band. He flexes his hands and takes a step to the side—tentative and exploratory. The window with the textbox pops out of existence and Moon gives you one final, narrowed glare before he just… leaves offscreen. Again. What the fuck?

You scrub a hand down your face and groan. You don’t expect him to return, but just in case you wait around a little and kill some time by filling out the submission form. Name, program version, strengths, encountered issues, and so on. You submit the form when you finish and roll your shoulders. Yeah, he doesn’t come back. At least there was some progress compared to yesterday.

You end the day with a final squint at the FazPals icon and a shrug of your shoulders. Things could be worse, you suppose as you power off your computer and stare at your reflection through the dark screen of your monitor. Hopefully tomorrow brings more improvement.

part two

134 notes · View notes

pancakeke · 4 months

Text

I wrote a bunch of paragraphs about nothing in particular again so here it is under a readmore so it doesn't take up space.

like 8 years ago when people used tumblr more via desktop browser than its app, I put a 3rd party metric tracker in my desktop theme that logged how people were referred to my blog. it also captured what pages of my blog people viewed.

at one point during this time I reblogged a piece of pixel art from a japanese artist. they came to my blog through their activity page, and then searched my blog in a couple different ways for the terms "ドット" and "ドット絵" ("dot" and "dot art", as in pixel art). I checked those search urls myself to see if they found anything but there were no results because I never used those terms or specifically tagged pixel art in any other way.

ever since then I've made an effort to tag all pixel art I reblog with the term "pixel art". that artist was probably hoping to find more art to check out and it bums me out that my tagging system wasn't thorough enough to help.

this is why I have my current specific tag system lol. it keeps evolving but having the ability to find stuff you're into without jumping through hoops is really handy. (the site-wide post and tag searches return sooo much bullshit. it's a slog sifting through thr noise whenever I use those to fill my queue due to the sheer amount of manga caps, polls, liveblogs, personal posts, and fics posted without readmores...)

if only the way to view all tags you've ever used still worked. I think it caps at 500 or 1000 now and is also chronological so the first 500 or whatever tags you ever used show up in the list. then there's a hard stop and it does not update as you delete posts or use that mass tag editor to remove certain tags for your blog entirely.

I went through my used tag list earlier this year to unify certain tags and remove tags that I stopped using in favor for other ones, but I only got like 400 tagged terms down the list. maybe downloading my blog data would show more. the trick I mentioned uses your desktop blog's archive page. the tags are in its code so you can use "inspect element" to view it. I remember scrolling a lot to load a bunch of posts on the page but cant remember if this was required or I just did it to see if I could access more tags.

it's formatted all fucked and hard to manage but you can copy and paste the long chunk of tags into one cell of a spreadsheet and then use Data options to split them into columns by commas (or whatever punctuation separates them, I forget). a wide list is a huge pain to view so from there you can click on a cell containing data, click ctrl+a to highlight all data in thr row, copy, then paste special as "transposed" to turn the copied row 90° so it pastes as a column. the spreadsheet will wide as fuck from the hundreds of columns so honestly its easier to paste the transposed data into a new tab and delete the original vs clicking in the column to the left of your transposed data and then pressing ctrl+ shift+right arrow to select all rows to the right, then deleting the extra rows.

if you're in Excel you may have to use the "delete rows" option from the "home" tab and then save the sheet using "file > save" (do NOT save via the save button on the upper left corner or ctrl+s). this returns the sheet to a manageable size for scrolling (plus reduces its file size). this piece of shit software usually retains the sheet width/length even after you delete hundreds of columns/rows unless you use this trick of deleting specifically via home tab + saving specifically through the save menu.

I got a round number of tags when I did this which makes me think there's a cutoff.

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honnojis · 1 year

Note

hello Zumi have you ever tried competitive Pokémon on smogon?

Nop, never really was my thing. I used to play on showdown, sure, but it'd usually be random battles or hackmons. Actual competitive play stressed me out a bit too much, and I had a really terrible experience when i tried getting into it a bit more by applying for a spot as a leader for an online league, so I've just never bothered since.

Shoutout to Bibs for being a homie w/ hackmons/random battles tho. that shit was fun and i miss it sometimes

For the drama bit, I'll just put it under the cut bc no one really needs to see a wall of text ab me getting salty about it again but wow i sure still think about it sometimes. this was all skype era shit btw, but it's arguably one of the very few things that literally had me seething, which is why I've never bothered with anything comp related since

Funnily enough, the drama wasn't even related to the actual competitive aspect of the whole league that I was supposed to be a part of -- it was bc someone on the league's board committee was awfully petty and two-faced LOL… All bc they didn't like I was potentially going to overshadow their work.

I actually knew them well before this. They were pretty friendly towards me at first, and they initially approached me because wanted to learn how to do pixel art better, so I taught them! They acted really grateful when I gave them advice, and hell, they even did some sprites for Rejuvenation at the time as it was at a time that I was extremely busy with school.

Now fast forward a bit, and a group of ppl from the same community set up an online Showdown league, with leaders for each type. That person was on the board committee, but some other members of the board committee were going behind their back in order to actually recruit me for the league as a leader. I passed the tryouts, and got into the group.

Kicker is, the reason why they went behind the person's back, is bc apparently That Person(TM) was absolutely adamant about not wanting me on the team!

The reason for that?

They didn't want me there so I couldn't get a chance to do any art for the league, because they were afraid they'd get overshadowed by me.

This sounds like bragging, and god i fucking WISH I was kidding in that regard, but I'm completely serious 💀 Apparently ANOTHER league wanted my assistance for sprites, but because That Person(TM) was already on the team, they started throwing a shitfit about how they absolutely could NOT work together with me without wanting to give a real reason, they just kept insisting that they absolutely couldn't. The chatlogs of these moments were sent to me after a group of ppl who were getting aggression aimed at them from the person.

I kinda pieced things together because they were sucking up to me for art advice until they learned what they needed, then I lost contact with them until I got drafted for the league, after which they just... Wanted to chew me out instead, lol. despite never having done anything to prompt such hatred. all i did was help and be nice. and after seeing the logs it kinda clicked in my head that that's what was going on.

funnily enough this all happened around the time they were sucking up to jan bc they were asked to do some work for rejuv, but that shit fell through real quick once jan got the logs of all the shit they've been saying lmao

A whole bunch of shit happened after that, but basically I left the league, some ppl left bc I left, other members got fed up w/ That Person(TM)'s shit and the whole league crumbled before it ever got the chance to take off LOL.

It's genuinely one of the worst feelings I've ever experienced that someone abused my trust in a person like that, only using me for my skills, and it actually gave me some trust issues for a few years whenever people asked me for art advice!

i had a whole document of bullshit that this person pulled. i still actually have it somewhere, and frankly i probably should just delete it at some point bc it has no use and i haven't seen this person around in a long time bc they basically got chased out of the community for being a shithead. in my defense for that document though, the fact that a person drove me to get so mad that i started collecting receipts on them kinda tells how hurt i got about this whole situation. to say they were an awful person not only just to me but to a lot of my friends as well is an understatement

#zumi answers #Anonymous #anyways sorry for the rant under the cut im just. bitter i guess

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literallymechanical · 3 years

Text

NFT’s Are Stupider Than You Think

tl;dr if you want the full-res, 21,000 x 21,000 pixel, 300 MB image from the 69 million dollar Beeple NFT, skip to the bottom for the download link. It’s not piracy or hackery, it’s just a feature of how NFT’s work.

[Image ID: The low-resolution preview image for Beeple’s Everydays: The First 5000 Days, as posted on the Christie’s auction website]

Okay so we’ve all know that NFT’s—and crypto mining in general—are an environmental nightmare, in terms of ridiculous energy costs. Also, most people are aware that the digital asset itself (often artwork) that corresponds to the NFT isn’t stored on the blockchain. But there are a few more issues that aren’t as widely understood, judging by the reporting I’m seeing.

Let’s use the 69 million dollar Beeple NFT as an example. Before anything else, here’s the auction house where Beeple sold it. (I’m using bare URL’s in this post, to make it more clear where each link leads)

https://onlineonly.christies.com/s/beeple-first-5000-days/beeple-b-1981-1/112924

This is a screenshot from that page. I’ve highlighted the smart contract address, 0x2a46f2ffd99e19a89476e2f62270e0a35bbf0756. That’s the address of the NFT itself on the Ethereum blockchain. Also note the Token ID, 40913. Without listing these data so you can verify what you’re buying, the auction is meaningless. This appears to be an older token protocol, I think? Usually you can just get the Token ID from the smart contract without having to list it separately. I’m not an expert, idk.

Also, a very very quick primer: A blockchain (in this case, the Ethereum blockchain) is basically a verifiable, unforgeable, secure, publicly-viewable ledger, where you provably say “I have sole control over this piece of data.”

Anyway, the typical way to interact with the Ethereum blockchain is a website like etherscan.io, like so:

https://etherscan.io/address/0x2a46f2ffd99e19a89476e2f62270e0a35bbf0756

That’s the Beeple’s Everydays smart contract. Remember all this for later. Let’s move on to the stupidity. First...

The artwork isn’t stored on the blockchain. But neither is the metadata you own.

Most people are aware of this, to some extent. The artwork itself isn’t on the blockchain, just a piece of metadata, right?

Well, no, it’s actually stupider. The metadata isn’t on the blockchain. The only thing that’s actually stored on the blockchain is a URI (Uniform Resource Identifier), which in practice is almost always either a URL (web address) or an IPFS hash (InterPlanetary File System address), but it could be any kind of address. Hell, it could literally be GPS coordinates, if you want. Usually it’s an IPFS hash, though.

Here’s the URI that’s stored in the Beeple NFT. You can get it from that etherscan.io link by going to the “contract” tab and entering “40913″ into the tokenURI query.

ipfs://ipfs/QmPAg1mjxcEQPPtqsLoEcauVedaeMH81WXDPvPx3VC5zUz

For most NFT’s it’s easier than that, you can get the TokenID from the contract? Again, I’m not an expert, but I think this is an outdated token protocol called “Erc20.”

Since this is an IPFS hash, not a url, you can’t quite just type it into a typical web browser. First you should turn it into a web address by using an IPFS gateway, such as ipfs.io:

https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmPAg1mjxcEQPPtqsLoEcauVedaeMH81WXDPvPx3VC5zUz

If you’re on tumblr mobile and clicking links is annoying, here’s a screenshot of what you’ll find at that address.

[Image ID: A screenshot of the JSON text file linked by the expensive Beeple NFT. It lists metadata for the artwork.]

The URI you own can die at any time

The point of storing things on a blockchain is that they are immutable, and verifiable, and can’t be forged. "ipfs://ipfs/QmPAg1... etc.” isn’t going anywhere, and is provably yours.

However, the text file that lives at that URI? That screenshot? That’s not stored on the blockchain, and it can disappear. You own the GPS coordinates of a storage locker full of paintings, but that doesn’t help you if the metaphorical storage facility burns down. Or if whoever has the key to the storage locker (often the original artist, and/or the auction website) comes in and replaces everything with pictures of rugs.

[Image ID: A tweet where an artist explains that they replaced their NFT artwork with pictures of carpets, “pulling the rug” on their auctions.]

Both of these things are already happening. A lot of NFT’s are already “abandoned,” asserting ownership over a dead URI. IPFS storage is supposed to take care of that, but in practice it’s poorly implemented, and even when done right it isn’t as failsafe as they’d have you believe. IPFS peer-to-peer storage is slightly less fragile that just storing a file on a website, but not by much. If the IPFS node goes down, the file is lost.

Does this sound like it wildly defeats the purpose of using decentralized blockchain storage in the first place? You’re right! It does.

If the auction website you bought your NFT on goes out of business, you will almost certainly lose the NFT you bought. And we all know how stable web startups are lol. Anyway, next up...

You don’t have exclusive access to anything

A lot of people think of owning an NFT like they own a painting. They have the artwork. They can keep it to themselves, or they can display it in a gallery with their name next to it, but everybody knows it’s theirs! NFT startups use this as a selling point. They say anybody can have a print of the Mona Lisa, but only you own the original.

This is dumb, because in the case of digital art, the print and the original are identical in every way. Every single 1 and 0 is the same, and if URI goes down, who cares who bought it? The NFT says you just own a URI that points to a text file. And by design, that URI is public. This isn’t a hack, or a bug. This is the entire point. But the people who run auction sites can be hella disingenuous about that.

Here’s that text file again. Notice this bit I just highlighted at the bottom?

That’s a separate IPFS hash for the actual image file. MakersPlace wrote this NFT incorrectly by using their own makersplace.com IPFS gateway instead of just posting the highlighted bit on its own—if MakersPlace goes out of business, that link will die—so instead I’ll link to that hash through the ipfs.io gateway, which is probably less likely to break any time soon.

But if it does, there are plenty more... until the MakersPlace IPFS node goes down, in which case it’s just gone forever no matter what lol.

So, without further ado...

WARNING: THIS IS A DIRECT LINK TO A 319 MEGABYTE JPEG. IF YOU’RE ON MOBILE, THAT MIGHT MAKE YOUR PHONE SAD IDK.

https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmXkxpwAHCtDXbbZHUwqtFucG1RMS6T87vi1CdvadfL7qA

You’re welcome.

#nft

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ggroupsdaily · 3 years

Note

hola! cómo le haces para que tus icons te salgan en buena calidad?

Hi! I apologize but I cannot speak Spanish, so I am going to have to translate your ask through Google Translate. Which I know isn’t the best method, I’m sorry!

According to Google Translate, you’re saying “wave! How do you make your icons come out in good quality?”

Hopefully, that is close enough to what you’re saying and if so, first off, thank you for saying they are good quality! Secondly, I’ll walk you through my icon making process. It’s actually very simple and fast (at least IMO lol I can make an icon in like 5 minutes but I also use PS for a living so I’m pretty used to the program)

I’ll show you how to go from this random image from Lisa’s Instagram:

to this icon

FULL TUTORIAL UNDER THE CUT

First off, open Photoshop and drop in your image (I have Adobe Cloud PS 2020) Then I want to clean up the colors of the image, because the image is too yellow, and was clearly taken in bad lighting.

1. Click Auto Tone 2. Click Auto Contrast 3. Click Auto Color

That should help give the image a much nicer, natural color, as shown below:

4. Select the Selection Tool 5. Click Select Subject

6. Click Add Mask 7. Double-click your mask to edit

8. Click View, then select Overlay V (this will help you see where you need to clean up your image) 9. Adjust settings to the image (This part really just depends on your image. Generally, I always set the Shift Edge to -50%, as it helps take away any white fuzziness around the image. Smooth obviously smooths the edges, Contrast helps sharpen them, and Feather...feathers them....just don’t use Feather okay?)

10. Select Refine Edge Tool and make sure it is set to Expands Detection Area (aka the + symbol lol) 11. Paint over any areas that Photoshop didn’t accurately mask

12. Select your mask again 13. Select your Paint Brush tool (make sure it is set to Hardness 100 and an appropriate size for your image) 14. Set your Foreground and Background colors to White and Black (Just click the little black and white boxes above them)

15. Using your paintbrush tool paint in (or out) details you need (In this case I just need to paint her face back in, so I use the brush tool set to white and paint where the pixels are distorted)

Now she is ready to be cropped and edited.

16. Flip/crop/adjust the image as desired (My best tip is to use the crop tool and put the focus of the image in the center of the grid)

Here’s the final cropped image:

17. Click Image>Image Size

18. Set the Image Width to 300 Pixels, check Resample, and set to Bicubic Sharper (Reduction) and click OK

19. In your Layer Panel, select your Image, NOT your mask (nothing will happen if you edit your mask lol)

20. Click Filter>Noise>Reduce Noise...

21. Adjust to the following settings (or whatever you prefer to get the image looking smooth) Click OK

Now my image is smooth and free from noise and grain, but I want her to be more in focus.

22. Click Filter>Sharpen>Smart Sharpen

23. Use the following settings

This is a basic sharpen that many editors use for gifs, edits, icons, etc, and you can just stop there for the sharpening step if you want, but I prefer my icons sharper, so I click Filter>Sharpen>Smart Sharpen again and this time, I use these settings:

You can see the differences below. The left side has just the basic sharpen, and the one on the right has both sharpens (you can clearly see the difference)

Once you’ve sharpened as desired, we’re ready to finally get to the fun and colorful part!

24. Add a gradient bg below your image (There are tons of free ones you can download from Tumblr or Google, or you can just make your own with the a gradient layer)

This next step is optional as not all images need it, but for this image, I need to do some badly needed image adjustments

First I click the adjustment layer on my layer panel and click Selective Layer

Then I set the colors to Blacks and drag the Black to +35 to darken up the blacks on the image and give it a nicer contrast (selective colors are great, mess around with them as much as you want until you find a look you like!)

Then I make a Brightness/Contrast layer and adjust to what I feel works best for the image

26. Create a folder (if you did the above step, select the layers and then click the folder icon, it’ll just put them in the folder)

27. Holding down the alt key on Windows (or the Option key on Mac) click and drag your mask to the group layer. Now you have a folder that you can put PSDs and adjustment layers in without affecting your gradient background

28. Drag your PSD of choice. I am using this amazing PSD that is perfect for pale photos. I set the PSD to 50% opacity and it looks like this

Now, I could stop here, but I’m extra so I want to doctor up her face a little.

29. Above your PSD folder, create a new layer and set it soft light

30. Select your brush tool again, and pick a color that will work for enhancing an area of the photo. Then paint over that area.

Lisa is already pretty pale here, so I won't paint over her skin with a nice peach color like I do sometimes in darker photos. But I will add a nice pink flush to her cheeks and her lips.

Then I will use a lilac purple to paint over her eyeshadow. This brings an element of the background onto her face.

There’s not a lot that needs to be added to this particular photo, but here’s an example of another icon without and with soft light painted layers:

The left has no soft light painted layers, the right does. You may be thinking it looks too gaudy, but icons are tiny! Adding strong colors will help painted areas stand out. However, this is a completely optional step of course :)

31. Back to our current icon. Select all your layers, and click the folder icon again to place them all in a folder

32. Select your Elliptical Marquee tool and make a circle over your image

33. Click your mask button in the layers panel, and tada! You can now save out your icon and put it to use

Here is the completed icon:

If you got this far, thank you for reading, and let me know if you have any questions!

#ggnet #kgirlsquad #blackpinknet #idolady #femaleidols #lisa manoban #photoshop tutorial #icon tutorial #photoshop #tutorial #icon #icons #if this type of post doesn't belong in any of the group tags just let me know and i will remove the tag #wasnt sure if tutorials counted lol #Anon #ask

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its-kall-the-clown · 3 years

Note

🌹🌹🌹 - Pixel Anon

hey, pixel anon!

wow three? *sweats* TBH I don't know if I have much more I can share without super spoilerage. so the first 2 are lines from WIP and the last one is from my personal journal cause I don't think I have anything else to give you LOL but it's rude to turn people away.

1) But she wasn't here right now, none of the adults were.

Click.

2) The definition of awkward pales in comparison to the atmosphere between the three.

3) Observation 19 - stars 01.08.2021 I wish I could see the stars from here

#ask game #dont make fun of my journal jdkzfgnsdf #I write one line there that a single observation for that day

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ranmanjuu · 4 years

Note

not a request but can you imagine oda forces trying to play smash against the anti-oda or they all play minecraft together

i’ll expose myself here. i have never ever played smash (although minecraft steve being announced is super pog) so i can’t tell ya that part bud. but i can with the blok game. (disclaimer that this request was made after i closed it yet my heart said No, you actually Want to do this so here i am. most probably will be short).

‎

welcome folks, to SengokuSMP.

oda forces:

—nobunaga:

would be the one that steals your iron and shit. commits thefts willy nilly, and no one is exempt from this. if he needs it, he’ll get it with or without your consent.

would kill an iron golem for the few iron it gives

before he got his own base (cause i think he’d just spend most of his time mining and getting materials to protect himself) he’s probably just barge in the nearest bed and sleep in it, regardless of the owner.

his base would probably be built by hideyoshi or sumthn.

he prefers playing pvp more than just survival. since mc placed a kind of restriction for the end (and therefore blocking them from completing the game), he goes onto servers and practice his battles even in a block game.

1.9 axe-shield pvp. he’s tactical in knowing when to strike and block and to back down, and is immaculate with his crits.

—hideyoshi:

probably spends the first few days around nobunaga to protect him. he always fights off the mobs near him even if nobunaga can handle himself.

always reminds people to sleep every night, so that the phantoms don’t come. even though a lot of the players prefer to just stay up.

built a base for nobunaga near his mine cause he needs A Place and not just mooch furnaces and beds from other people.

spawned iron golems for “protection” but nobunaga keeps killing them cause it just gets in the way

would be the one to make mines 4 blocks high so you don’t Bump your head thing, probably like 3 block width and even staircases. would also be the one to make a safety railing across any bridges he finds.

if an ally, he’d greet new players and give them some extra stuff so that they have Something to start off with

i feel like he’d be a pve player idk why

—mitsuhide:

no one knows where he is most of the time. nor his base.

unless you see his nametag (which, most of the time, he’ll see yours first) it’s kinda hard to find him when he’s off and alone.

mf is the black market of the server. whatever potions, potion ingredients, or shit like that, he has. he probably owns like several wither skulls enough to summon a wither.

he would sneak around when mc is mining and just like. scare the shit out of them. the cave noises don’t help.

(the newest screenshot hasn’t been released yet but,) y’all know the warden? the new mob? cause it’s reliant on sounds, if anyone is ever in its proximity he’d throw like snowballs at them so that it goes after them. little shit.

bow skills?? perfect. even in a game his accuracy is spot on. you know those obstacles people make with like slime blocks and maybe mlg 360s? mf can do that

he probably knows enough redstone to make traps, too.

somehow knows what everyone has/doesn’t have.

—masamune:

prank ass bitch.

he probably has like a Source of tnts in his base or something. if anyone is moving out of their old base, he’ll either blow it up or burn it, whether they wanted to or not.

fuck it. he’ll do it even if you’re not moving.

probably doesn’t often sleep and would rather fight off the phantoms than anything.

he probably wants to defeat the dragon quick, cause it’s supposed to be the game’s ultimate goal. but because of the previous restrictions you put, he just goes off and fights other players (cough kenshin, nobunaga)

and when he does kill you, expect like half of your items to not be returned.

also one of the casual thieves in the server. he just doesn’t care that it Belongs to someone and just yoinks

also a pvp player, although i find him leaning more to 1.8 style. he will jitter click you out of existence.

has dogs because idk he gives off that vibe also they Attack.

—ieyasu:

does not log on much lol. he got on once and then Never Again. it’s only when you ask him that he begrudgingly does get in in his own contrarian way.

definitely goes wayy far out for more isolation cause he doesn’t want to get caught up with whatever shit masamune has.

the only major thing he did besides mining and everything was that he got a cat. and almost no one knows about it, other than you because:

“ieyasu has made the advancement [Best Friends Forever]!”

“mc: :OOOOO!!!!”

yeah, you never told anyone.

the longest time that he logged in at first was probably when he found out that cats sleep in beds and just. sat there as the night goes by in his bunker just watching and hearing it purr. he’s a bit irritated when the others tell him to sleep, but then see that the cat went and slept on him that secretly made his heart soft.

and then you insisted on going to his base which took a considerable amount of time, and even with his denying, you decide to decorate and expand his base! you also got to name the cat, but you never knew since you just said like “i’d name it [...]!” and later ieyasu found a name tag and actually did name it that.

—mitsunari:

he doesn’t run a lot i don’t feel. primarily because he was wonky with the controls from the start.

i feel like he’d have the brain to be a redstone engineer. he spends more time like, making those cool machines than anything (probably those that’d help out everyone like an automated farm, etc.)

thing is he forgot that he could die, so most of the time he’s just starve to death without even noticing it.

much like in real life, he always forgets to sleep. and that’s why phantoms are his number 2 in his cause of deaths.

doesn’t have an actual base. hideyoshi built a small one for him, but mitsunari kind of never uses it and just logs off on the spot. at this point it just became a part of the main buildings for everyone or something.

he doesn’t do an awful a lot of collecting and often asks others for some. and when he is given it, he goes “thank you ^^ <3″ and does like the happy-shift thing. it’s honestly too cute for it to be just pixels.

probably knows a lot about minecraft stuff too, it’s just that he never uses any of it.

—ranmaru:

he was so excited the first time you told him that he was invited to the smp of sengoku warlords! would probably frequent the most.

i think he’d just vibe really. not exactly going extremely into pve or pvp or redstone or building, he plays it at a very slow place and more like an animal crossing player would.

like, he builds a small farm and stuff. it isn’t as efficient as mitsunari’s, but it is what it is. also has an animal pen with loads of one animal category and he tends to let people use it with the exclusion of some (coughs masamune) as long as they breed them again or something.

and while he doesn’t go for the big projects, he is kind of a builder? he has the Aesthetic sense while building his house and stuff yk. would maybe lean into the cute, cottagecore stuff.

favorite food in game is probably cake! it takes more effort than most other foods and it just looks cute so he likes making them.

totally has shaders on.

is scared shitless of cave noises at times. you could play 11 near him and he’d just straight up panic and log off.

‎

uesugi-takeda forces:

—shingen:

i find him to be maybe one of those builders that stick to large projects and stuff idk why

he does other things too, mainly pvp (he likes to just head over to nobunaga’s base and kill him sometimes. not that the man doesn’t accept the challenge). would probably also be more into 1.9 pvp because he’s a very calculative person in fighting. yes even in block game.

but the first thing he built once he’s set from collecting materials, was a “restaurant”. for what, you ask? why of course he takes you on a minecraft date. that was the top of his list the moment you even told him about the smp

once the others found out (which was not that long) he just started bragging. kenshin burnt down the building later on.

but he always escorts mc or some shit while spewing out his Lines in chat, sometimes doing the bow in game thing. in response, there are several barfs in chat, and a list of people coming to kill him.

mf likes to combat log on kenshin when he’s on a Killing Spree for the shits and giggles.

—kenshin:

first time you told him about it, he was very happy to learn something about mc’s modern times, even if it’s a children’s game. unfortunately, he didn’t know what an ‘smp’ meant.

so when he logged on and saw that there were Other people, his smile turned into a deadly frown as he just began punching them to death. he only stopped when they ran off and you intervened.

he tried having you stick around longer when you were giving him a tutorial of how to play the game.

at first he only collected material to get stronger. and by that only sword because he sees no need in getting armor (he doesn’t die in battle irl, he can’t die in a simple game). but WRONG cause he got killed by shingen who, even though he had a stone axe, had iron armor while kenshin got nothing but an iron sword.

he doesn’t make a base (why do so many here don’t make bases istg). in fact, he doesn’t log on much.

at first, he only goes on if mc is on. it’s only when he sees that mc appreciates some of the work the others have put into things (like shingen’s builds, mitsunari’s redstone, etc.) is when kenshin tries to Do Things Too and kinda fail.

this man kinda has no aesthetic sense in the block game. but you give him a for effort.

1.8 pvper. he can definitely do 1.9, but more the former mostly cause his deadly anger makes him jitter click like crazy. often challenges others (consented or not) which mostly includes masamune and nobunaga, and he often surprise attacks shingen and sasuke.

—yukimura:

honestly a normal player in survival.

he makes a decent house, has some pretty strong gear, and just helps around his allies a lot (mostly {try to} drag kenshin away from trouble, scold shingen for being too close to mc {though it’s a him problem ngl} and just being a messy caretaker).

i feel like he’d enjoy tekkit tbh. sasuke would probably introduce it to him and he’d just generally enjoy it.

but this is about the smp

he got lucky the first drowned he killed dropped a trident and it’s been his favorite weapon.

probably tried at one point to build kenshin a small base but he wouldn’t listen so like. shrugs.

he’s a bit iffy with playing alongside the enemies in the same server, but they are kind of divided into two. and mc did say it was just for fun and games and they didn’t want to see actual wars be dragged into this, so he just lets it go and has fun.

he looks forward to beating the enderdragon a lot, when the end is available.

—sasuke:

oh Boy he’s having a field day. his adored sengoku warlords? playing minecraft, his childhood game??? absolute pog.

even though it was you who proposed the idea, the one who set up the server in the first place was sasuke, since he has more knowledge on that stuff.

since he got his bearings quicker than the rest from experience, and he was earlier to log on due to testing and stuff, he mostly helps you with building like the main hub, like the center place for everyone and generally things that involve helping the overall smp.

can mlg water bucket, through a lot of trial and error. he uses it mostly to make dramatic entrances where he drops from a hill and just not take damage.

^ speaking of Dramatic Entrances, he probably has a chest full of ender pearls for those specifically.

although he helps a lot with guiding everyone, at times, he pulls out the ol’ “sleep in the nether :)” suggestion just to troll

ngl he’d stick to his ninja thing and successfully make a redstone-wired door and has his banger secret base in it

—yoshimoto:

the s in smp doesn’t exist to him.

he’s just a collector, really. one of his first priority isn’t even materials like stone, the moment he finds any kind of flowers he’ll pick it up. it’s only when yukimura and sasuke actually Give him shit does he start living a not broke life.

probably dies a lot to mobs and stuff

but like legit, this man spent a long time collecting all 13 discs and almost every flower (yes, even the biome only ones) because he wants to take it all in. nevermind the fact that he can just listen to the discs online and all.

he’s immaculate in his aesthetics. even with just wood he makes his base look really cool ngl.

some parts of it are plastered with every painting there is in minecraft, or just item frames, or flowers in their pots. every decoration you can think of, lamps, campfires, even armor stands, he has them.

you gotta give him credit, it’s a lot of effort.

he often afks just to listen to the music even though, again, he could just listen to it online.

got into a bit of a spiel with ranmaru, since he unknowingly dyed a lot of his sheep (he did categorize it with color though). and so they made an agreement to just have every color sheep, and put them in different pens. so they just shared it now

he saw the cave updates and went silently bonkers because how pretty some look (like the lush caves? hello??)

he has like. 14+ texture packs and 4 different shaders ready at his settings.

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coffeeandcalligraphy · 3 years

Note

Since houses with teeth is shelved what will be fostered 7. Also how is FD coming along, i miss the updates😢😢

I’m not sure! I think, honestly, that the “main series” side of Fostered is done (so it ends at 6 books). It’s unfortunate because HWT came at the wrong time in my writing journey. I was in my last year of high school when I finished book 6 of Fostered, which I ended prematurely because I was in “writing puberty” lol where my genre, and how I approached writing greatly changed. I managed to finish a majority of book 6 balancing the older parts of my tastes with the newer, but by the time I got to writing book 7, I just couldn’t balance out these tastes anymore without having a headache or overthinking everything. The problem is that Houses With Teeth is a literary fiction novel with a genre fiction past/cast, and to write it properly, I would essentially have to completely overhaul every single Fostered character, which I do not want to do. I’d have to change backstories, even names, and I want to keep these things the way they are. There isn’t a collective story for the Fostered “squad” anymore! It really died when the dystopian elements died in the series. This is why I prefer the spinoffs more because they’re more intimate character studies. I could see myself writing HWT as a novella or something that follows Reeve, because it would be nice to give her a proper goodbye, but I doubt I will do that. This is a really emotional topic for me tbh because it really panics me to think Fostered will eventually end, but I’ve realized lately the series could be done soon, or at least for the foreseeable future. I really want to start writing things outside of this series, namely other novels, and while I love this series very much, I do think I’ve relied on it in recent years as a crutch to handle my anxiety about writing/in general. I struggle with anxiety when writing any novel that isn’t Fostered, which is weird because I write tons of short stories outside of that universe, but when the work is longer, I just freeze up! I want to work on this, and to do that, I need to take a break from/finish the series, even though the thought of that is terrifying (I think that terror comes from the anxiety)!

As for Feeding Habits, I had to take a huge break from this book this semester, not out of choice, necessarily, but necessity. At the beginning of the term, I was having a hard time writing this book, honestly. I had to switch POVs because I was... miserable lol! But then I got so busy with the term that I couldn’t even write anyway! I’ve been writing it actually in the last few days, and it’s going okay! This book is kind of torture to write sometimes because I am actually incapable of not hating or disliking the writing??? Sometimes I’m not even actively trying but my brain is like no u hate this! Like today, I wrote a good chunk of it, was like this prose?? gross lol, but I’ve made it a policy not to let that mindset stop me from writing because it has done so in the past, and when I go back, the writing is fine, and it was all my shaky perception. This is the only project this happens for??? Don’t know why!

The reason there aren’t any updates for FH is because I haven’t finished the next chapter yet, haha, it’s been months haha university as a writing major hahahahhaa

But here are some recent excerpts if you’re interested!

I wrote this at the very beginning of term. Lonan hitchhikes in the car of Lydia, who’s just picked her children up from school:

They stopped fifteen minutes later at a hospital in Portland. The children were mostly excited about its in-house pizza parlour called Zekes, which blinked in neon red letters. Esther and Jensen barrelled toward the revolving door while Lonan fumbled for his seatbelt, and in the end it was Lydia who had to click the release for him. When the grey belt slinked across his chest, back into its holder, he stared at her for a moment—how her red curls haloed in the sun, how a blot of ink stained her index finger (a paralegal, she could’ve been, a teacher, an accountant) how she smiled, this stranger who trusted him, her face this wide, unsuspecting plane—and then he sobbed.

Not sure if I’ve shared this already? But this is Lonan seeing his ex-girlfriend Glenne for the first time in a while:

She was filling two plastic bottles at the motel’s water fountain when he pulled up. The image of her this suspension of ink-soaked particles. She could’ve been a photograph, bent over the metal box, one hand dialled around the fountain nob, the other guiding a bottle to the greedy blip of water. The sun had settled like a yolk in the sky, frescoed her cheeks in persimmon. This is the same image Lonan stared at as he fumbled into the parking lot, mesmerized, trying to distinguish pixel from skin cell.

Glenne was smaller than he’d remembered, something new about her. Maybe a slyness, or a decomposition, or both. She wore a bleached grey pair of cotton overalls and no shoes. Against the mahogany motel door her blonde hair sparked. A woman on fire as she noticed him, her hands jerking so suddenly, the bottle she was filling disengaged from the tap and the contents splashed to the floor.

(TW: gore) I wrote this in a writing sprints weeks ago where Lonan in this chapter’s fictive present is in this super disconnected space to the point where he *tries (doesn’t really get that far lol) to kill Harrison with a butter knife??

Slit or swan. The knife across his throat like a block of Jenga reslotting. Him in the fridge lightbulb’s reflection, staring at a sealed block of gouda. It would be so easy, his arterial spray like the rays of water splaying the motel’s walkway. Him unsure when the pigment of the cheese’s red wax begins to come from him. Slit or swan. The refrigerator’s hum like the drone of cars dicing the freeway just beyond the parking lot. Remember it. That noise like caribou running.

I also wrote this during that writing sprint and LOVE the radio commentator’s dialogue:

Across the room, Glenne leaned over the nightstand, fiddling with the clock radio. In bursts, what could be heard from the room was this: the microwave whirring, then a jab of 6 o’ clock news, the microwave beeping, then a blast of electropop, the microwave slamming, then a radio host saying Tell me why I should care about almonds, Eileen, literally, tell me why. The microwave beeped again, then finally, a lick of violins pulsed through the speakers.

Wrote this description either today or yesterday??? what is time (TW: body horror-ish)

So much of his face had dried violet after the crash that it was difficult to find a patch of untouched skin. His eye was still bloodshot from where Eliza had burst the ventricle, and a scattering of cuts, small, like grains of rice, constellated his temple. His hair beamed from his head in different lengths. He looked more bird than human and even then, worse than a bird.

^^ confirmation that lonan IS a bird

I also wrote this today! Lonan takes care of Glenne’s baby, Olivia and it is so PURE I cannot handle it! At one point in time, I had a separate Fostered spinoff called ALANNIS planned out where Lonan actually takes on a fatherly role of Olivia who would be older at that point (he’s in his late 20s, I think she was like 7 or 8??) and so it’s so fantastic to see this role come to fruition here since I never thought it would!

The grocery store was a fifteen-minute walk away. With Olivia clinging to his shoulder, Lonan was acutely aware that she could feel his heartbeat. Open valve. Close. Repeat. Hers pulsed right above his heart, a miniature drumming. The sky had bruised purple, misted with clouds.

just imagine my terrifying bird man carrying this lil munchkin it’s SO CUTE!!

working on this chapter right now, so hopefully I’ll finish it and update you soon! <3

#asks #fostered

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blondedemon · 3 years

Text

i'm bored and in a writing mood so here's a short story. i wrote it in a sudden inspiration for with zero editing so i apologise if it's terrible lol

and i'm not gonna hide it under a 'keep reading' y'all gonna have to scroll

-------------------

There was a child sitting in the deep, bottom corner of her father's garden. The leaf litter was damp and mulching beneath her hands. Countless worms appeared whenever she dug her fingers into the soft soil. A ladybug crept across the thick pumpkin leaves that surrounded her, and there was a line of ants marching over the toes of her bare feet as they made their way home. The world was alive, alive, alive and she was lost in it.

Three small cupcakes sat with her in the dirt before her.

This was a strange sort of child. The type that adults loved to talk about, but never to. Her eyes were always fixed on some distant point on the horizon, or far nearer, on the ground right in front of her nose. But she would rarely meet the eye of someone who tried to address her. This sort of behaviour tends to put people on edge. Adults are discomfited by the feeling that a child might see more than they do. They encounter a child such as this and chatter behind her back; always off with the fairies and she just doesn't focus, that one and I'd really rather my girl doesn't play with her, she seems a poor influence.

The girl hears every word. And understands them all, even if they'd never credit her for it.

She doesn't feel strange. It was just a label attached to the outer edges of her by faces and voices that couldn't see all the way in. The girl was always seeing deeper than they were. It seemed pointless to talk to the giggling, empty children in her class when there were such better friends to be made elsewhere. Her dad would drop her at the gates with a kiss to her forehead and concern wrinkling his own. She would sit through classes, staring at walls and colouring her fingernails in with textas and graphite as her teachers asked her to write about her weekend. Art time was filled with sheets covered in horses and fairies and secret creatures that stared back at her from deep within the leaf litter. Her addition and subtraction equations would blur and muddle with all the numbers fighting and talking to and laughing with each other. Her stories were full of girls being carried away by strange creatures until they were so far from the reaches of anyone who could watch them. Far from anyone who wouldn't understand what she could see.

She had given up on telling people about her friends long ago.

But now, in the dying daylight, they crawled to her. Out of the leaves and soil and branches and rotting wood, their eyes bright and their scales glittering. They clicked as they approached, little noises in the depths of their throats. Heads cocked to the sides as they regarded her, claws digging little marks into the earth beneath their feet. And the girl stayed ever so still. Not even a lock of her hair would dare move in the wind as she waited for them to come nearer. Each one was perhaps only as long as her forearm, and of course, that wasn't very long at all. Their teeth were little daggers hidden behind scaly lips, only visible when they hissed at each other as they tripped over their own feet. She had no reason to fear them. They would never hurt her.

There were two dozen in all. She'd counted them. It was far more than there had been the first time. She'd been crawling in the pumpkin patch looking for pillbugs to put in her bright plastic bucket when she'd stepped on one. Her father had warned her about snakes, slim monsters with fangs that would stop your heart before you noticed they'd bitten you. And so when she felt those scales under her toes and saw that hard-plated body disappear into the twisting vines, her stomach had dropped.

But no snake had legs, did it? Lizards did, though. And dragons.

Her feet had been noticeably free of any vampire-like pinprick wounds, even through all the mud, and so she'd figured she probably wasn't about to die. So she sat herself down under a leaf, huddled down real small, and tried to peek under the next plant to see if she could find thecreature she'd accosted. Two sharp-yellow, slit-pupiled eyes had stared back. And promptly disappeared like a blink when the creature whipped around and disappeared into the dense plants. The girl was unfazed. She sat there for hours until her dad called her all worried-like from the house, calling her in for dinner.

She didn't see the creature again that night. Nor did her father see her until morning. When she crashed into the house, hours and hours and hours later and told her of her brief encounter, her dad had shouted at her for disappearing so long. He cried that he'd been worried sick. He yelled that he'd had to call the police. She didn't understand. She'd been safe, after all. What did it matter that he hadn't known exactly where she was? She'd never left the yard, he had nothing to be concerned about.

She didn't mention her creature again, but her father saw less and less of her that month. She would disappear into the yard with punnets of strawberries or chicken bones from the night before or little cakes that had been brought by classmates celebrating their birthdays, and she would place these in front of her in the dirt in that same spot and wait. Some things worked better than others. Especially the sweeter things. She could tell it was working when the leaves would rustle more aggressively near the ground, as if something was creeping amongst them.

It was a long, long while before she saw anything real again, though.

Her eyes were half closed when it happened. A slice of sweet banana bread lay amongst the leaves before her, and in an instant, it was gone.

There was a lot of banana bread baked in that second month. Her father could hardly believe how much his kid seemed to love it.

The girl learned how to stay so very still. If she got very quiet and convinced herself she was nothing but a rock lying in the garden, she could sit for hours without so much as licking her lips or wriggling her toes. And the banana bread didn't disappear every day. Sometimes the girl ended up eating it, dirt and all, running back inside to curl at her father's feet while he watched television, men running across the screen and kicking small pixellated balls across the grass. But sometimes, she would watch as a clawed paw would stretch out from behind the cover of a low-hanging, broad pumpkin leaf, and snatch the bread from before her eyes.

That was very often followed by concerning but contented growling from the pumpkins. And very enthusiastic chomping noises.

Slowly, the creature grew more confident, and the girl grew more sure that this was no animal her father had told her about, or that showed up in the encyclopaedias that lined the shelves of her school library. Curved claws smoothed into dense, haunched legs. There was a tail that tapered to a whip-thin point at the end, and front legs that could either hold the animal on all fours or stretch up to reach whatever it wanted to grab. It had a stout nose and a broad face with wide, wide eyes that were set under a scaled brow. A row of gentle spines tracing up its nose and between its surprisingly soft-looking ears.

And the entire thing was covered in plated scales in gradients of black and brown and white to create the most striking pattern she'd seen, a spiralling stripy design that bent the light around it and hid it even more convincingly in the shadows of the pumpkin patch.

She didn't breathe the first time she saw it in full. Its yellow eyes were watching her, unblinking, as she watched it back with an equally immobile gaze. It reached forward and clutched her banana bread to its chest and held her gaze for a second before disappearing into the dark again. In her mind, the girl called out to it. But of course she did not say anything. She had to be still, so very still

Now there were so, so many, and they were all over her. One was curled in the arch of her crossed legs, its side rising and falling gently with its sleepy breaths. Its skin was cold when it pressed against her, because it was nearly dark after all, and these creatures didn't make much of ther own heat. Most of them were battling over the thin pickings she'd left for them, because she simply couldn't bring enough cake to feed all of them anymore. Her father had been suspicious enough when she'd been taking banana bread just for one, but now she was catering for a whole army.

Her first dragon was the last to emerge. It stared at her from a distance, and then blinked slowly, slowly, slowly. The girl didn't move. Except for her slow blink in return. And the creature padded over to her, pressing its nose into her side ever so gently.

The girl moved then, and only then. She reached toward her dragon and cupped her hands under its soft belly, lifting its small body to her own. She felt it put its head on her shoulder and she hugged it to her chest, and she was home.

#writing #short story #my work #dragons #writeblr #home #gonna add a bunch of tags just to see if anyone will actually read my junk haha #but seriously I'm three hours from home at the moment and have been pretty much alone most of the week and i'm BORED

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doctor243 · 4 years

Text

The End of the World

Ok here’s the IronWidow I promised you lol

Chapter 3: Comfort

Summary: “This is how the world ends. Not with a bang, but with a……” or How I feel Endgame should have been written.

AO3

Pairing: Tony Stark x Natasha Romanoff

“Any news?” Natasha took a bite out of a PB&J sandwich. Her hair had grown longer in the past three years, and she now had it in a ponytail.

The older man sighed and shook his head. “There haven’t been any signs of his appearance since the last massacre.” Nat nodded, steeling herself.

“The Chinese Secret Societies?” She asked.

“No, the Italian Mafia,” he looked at her sympathetically. “Nat, if he doesn’t want to be found, he won’t be. You know that,” he said gently. “He’s got the same S.H.I.E.L.D. training as you.”

“I know,” she smiled at him sadly. “But I still have to try.”

The colonel nodded solemnly and reached to end the call.

“Rhodey,” she called out. He paused and looked at her. “Thanks for doing this.”

He just smiled at her and hung up, his image fading into pixels on the hologram projector. She let a small sob escape her lips as she fell back into her chair and brought her hands to her face. The Red Room had taught her how to eradicate any outer indication of emotion, but that never meant that she had none. It was a simple choice of hers whether to display the emotions or to hold them inside. But the Red Room had only prepared her for infiltration and interrogation and assassination and intimidation. Never would she have dreamt of being ready for death on such a large scale caused by beings from other planets, or superpowers that had only been true in fantasy.

“Still can’t find the little birdy?”

Nat’s head whipped around to find Tony leaning against the door frame of the hologram room. She shook her head, not trusting her voice.

“Oh Natalie,” he sighed, walking over to her while she snorted humourlessly at the name he used. “Come here.” He opened his arms to her.

Without a moment’s hesitation, she threw herself into his arms and wept, tears falling shamelessly and arms tight around his middle. The past three years had seen many of their hugs, and many of their tears. They had become each other’s confidant, helping each other to heal, even when the world seemed to have done so swimmingly.

“I need to find him, Tony,” Natasha whispered.

“I know, Nat,” he soothed, his warm hand rubbing circles on her back.

“He was there when I had nobody,” she continued. “He gave me a chance to have a new life, and without him, I never would have been a part of this team.” Her grip tightened on him. “This family.”

“We’ll find him,” Tony promised.

“I need to be there for him,” she cried again, heart aching as she thought about how he must have felt when he lost his wife, his children, and his entire world. And yet, a tiny part of her wondered if she actually wanted to find him. What could she do if they found the archer? She had nothing to offer him that could dampen his pain.

“We’ll be there for him,” Tony whispered once more, and Nat finally smiled as something clicked in her mind.

We. Us. Family.

Tony roared, the sound ripping through the entire cabin and breaking the blessed silence of the night. The door to Natasha’s room was flung open and the redhead shot out towards the source of the sound. She ignored the way her heart clenched at the pure sorrow that she heard in his voice. Yet when she ripped his door open, ready to rain down all the wrath and fire that heaven and hell could offer, his voice had reduced to a low wail, and her heart only dropped further. His hands were covering his face, but through the gaps of his fingers, she could see his frantic eyes darting around, as streams of tears leaked down his knuckles.

“Tony,” she whispered, inching forward cautiously.

He didn’t appear to register her voice, but his voice had died down to a soft whimper and an occasional sob. She continued to gently close the distance between them, hands held in plain sight as though she were approaching a wounded wolf. The nearer she got, the more she noticed his shaking body and hiccupped breath.

“Daddy?”

Immediately, Tony snapped out his stupor and looked to the door, where the silhouette of his beloved daughter stood. Natasha turned around as well, unsure whether she should usher the girl out the room or allow her to comfort her father.

“Hey baby,” the mechanic choked out with obvious effort. “What’s going on?”

“I heard yelling,” Morgan mumbled, rubbing her eyes. “’s everything ok?”

“Of course, Morguna,” her father smiled shakily as he trembled out of the bed and opened his arms invitingly. “Daddy just had a nightmare.”

Natasha sighed with a fond smile and ushered the sleepy girl forward. “Give your father a hug and go back to sleep.”

Morgan drowsily wrapped her arms around Tony’s neck and mumbled something incoherent. Nat noted his rattling hands calm a little as he took in a deep whiff of Morgan’s scent and his touch confirmed the reality of the situation. When they finally parted, she gave him a kiss on the cheek before stumbling blindly towards her bedroom. The master assassin followed her out as she gave Tony a look of concern.

“I’ll be back,” she assured him. “I’m just gonna put her to bed.”

Morgan had fallen asleep the minute her head touched the pillow, and Natasha couldn’t have been more grateful that she could hurry back to Tony’s side. She found him in the same spot she’d left him – at the foot of the bed, knees propped up and eyes staring into blank space.

She gingerly took her place next to him and placed her hand over his and waited.

“I was on Titan again,” he whispered after a very long few minutes. “And Peter was disintegrating in my arms. Again.”

Natasha gripped his hand even tighter.

“I couldn’t even preserve his ashes, Natasha,” he grunted. “Not a single one of his atoms.”

Still, Natasha said nothing. What could she say? Any word uttered would be a poor comfort to a broken heart. So instead, she stood up and pulled him into bed. He followed wordlessly, and she pulled up the quilt, before wrapping his arms around her shoulders.

“Hold on tight,” she breathed. “I won’t disappear.”

He didn’t reply, but his arms grew secure. When she woke up in the morning, he was still holding her.

“…and then I swear, she just caves!”

“Holy crap, Tones I hope you got that on video,” Rhodey laughed, his arms crossed in amusement.

“I wish I did,” Tony mused regretfully.

“What’re you talking about?”

The genius turned around to find Natasha walking into the hologram room.

“Oh nothing,” he teased. “Just how Morgan flashed her puppy eyes at you and you caved to her request for ice cream.”

Natasha rolled her eyes and stood next to him. “Your daughter is too cute for her own good, Stark.”

“She gets it from her dad,” he smiled before looking at the rest of the participants in the room. “Alright, now that the boss is here, we can begin.” Natasha swatted his arm while Steve laughed and Okeye smirked before beginning her update.

“Daddy! Can we have cheeseburgers?” Morgan bounced over to her father cheerily with a grin.

“I don’t know, sweetheart,” he smiled as he picked her up. “We have to ask Aunt Nat. She might want something else.”

“I love cheeseburgers!” she hummed.

“Me too,” he laughed. “So you need to ask her really nicely okay?”

“Okay!” she agreed. “Aunty Nat!” she called when they got into the house.

“Hello, my little munchkin,” Natasha smiled fondly. “What’s going on?”

“Can we have cheeseburgers?” she asked with a grin.

Natasha looked over at Tony’s knowing smile and decided to play. “Hmm I don’t know, sweetie,” she placed a finger on her lips. “I kinda wanted pasta today.”

“Do the eyes, Morguna,” Tony whispered excitedly. “Do the-” Nat’s hand shot out and slapped over his mouth. She didn’t need the little one to know how much power she held with those compelling eyes. Tony’s eyes narrowed while Morgan looked around, confused. Suddenly her hand felt a wet slick and Natasha yanked away with a yelp, a shiver shooting straight up from the base of her spine to her head.

“Oh my god, did you lick me?” she cried out incredulously.

“Did you not expect me to?” he sniffed. Morgan just chortled gleefully while clinging to her father.

Natasha just walked to the sink in disgust. “Ugh, fine, we can have cheeseburgers.” Morgan cheered in victory while Tony watched her, a smug smile on his face. When the father-daughter duo left to procure their dinner, Natasha wondered why she couldn’t stop thinking of his tongue on her hand.

“Can’t sleep?”

Morgan shook her head as she rubbed her eyes. Natasha just smiled and walked over to pick her up. The adults had been in the living room reading when the little angel had trudged down the stairs, looking frustrated.

“What’s wrong, love?” her father got up as well.

“inon’tknow”

Natasha laughed as she rocked the little girl in her arms. This little bundle of joy that brought her so much peace after so much devastation. “I have a great idea,” she thought out loud.

“Uh-oh,” Tony teased.

“Let’s build a blanket fort!” She suggested, locking eyes with Tony. His eyes widened a little before they filled with warm familiarity.

“And hot chocolate,” he finished with a smile.

“Exactly,” she answered, green eyes sparkling. Morgan giggled in agreement. She liked hot chocolate.

Twenty minutes later found the trio huddled underneath the cover of blankets, the only light coming from the lantern in the fort, and a mug of steaming drink in each of their hands. Tony and Nat, of course, had their additional secret ingredient, while they decided to give Morgan a little less sugar in hers. Nevertheless, she loved it.

“Did I ever tell you the time I met Uncle Steve?” Tony asked his daughter, who shook her head, a moustache of whipped cream decorating her upper lip. Natasha smiled by the side, reaching over to wipe it off. “Well I hated him.”

Morgan gasped in surprise. “Really?”

“Yep,” he confirmed, before continuing the story and putting a lighter spin to it – he didn’t need a traumatised five-year-old on his hands. By the time he was finished, their mugs were empty, and the child was asleep. He gently stroked her hair and gently placed a kiss on her forehead.

“Alright,” he groaned, climbing out of the tent and picking Morgan up. Natasha slid out as well, picking up the empty mugs and placing a kiss of her own on the girl’s head. She’d grown attached to the sight of Tony’s paternal affections and they must have rubbed off on her. “I’m gonna put the little miss here to bed. You go and get us some refills.” The redhead perked up with a nod, a hint of a smile forming at her lips as she bounded to the kitchen.

When he returned, she was already waiting for him, curled up under another (another??) blanket with renewed cups. She watched him climb in and join her with a chuckle. This blanket fort was smaller than the one they’d built in the tower, years back, but it was just as comfortable, and possibly even more cosy.

“She’s such an angel,” Natasha sighed contently.

“Yes, she is,” Tony hummed, taking a sip from his mug. His cheeks were starting to get a little pink, but to be fair they’d gone a little strong on the Irish Cream. To be further fairer, Natasha’s cheeks were kind of rosy too.

“You know, I found her grabbing cookies out of the jar and she said they were for you.”

Tony looked up in astonishment. “I never got any cookies,” he gasped, flabbergasted. “How could you let her lie to you like that?”

“Well,” the super-spy answered, finishing her mug. “She has her mother’s smile.”

“She does,” the Mechanic agreed softly, before turning to look at her. “But she has your kindness.”

“Me?” she snorted, rolling her eyes. “There’s so many things wrong with that statement.”

“Why?” Tony challenged, a spark in his eyes. “Because you’re not birth mother?”

“Well that,” Natasha huffed, suddenly exasperated. She didn’t want to have to spell it out for him, even if he was teasing her. “And I mean, ‘kindness’ is not exactly the word most would associate with the Black Widow.”

“That’s true,” he replied with a chuckle. “But I would associate it with ‘Natasha Romanoff’.”

She looked at him with a quirked eyebrow (there was that dangerous, dangerous eyebrow) and frowned. “Stop kidding,” she warned. She was getting a little upset by how irritating he was being. There was no need to dive into her can of worms.

“You are probably the kindest person I know,” Tony insisted, placing a hand on her wrist. “So kind that you don’t even know it.” She scoffed, but he insisted on continuing. “Who waited until the last possible second to close the wormhole just so that I had a chance of returning to this world?”

“Anyone would-”

“Who was the only one who could calm the hulk down?”

“That’s cuz-”

“Who immediately started relief work when she got back to New York? Who moved five states away to be by a lake just so I wouldn’t be lonely? Who organises meetings across the galaxy so that we’re still connected? Who helps me through my nightmares without a single complaint? Who spent the last three years looking for her best friend? Who still hasn’t given up?”

She finally shut up and broke eye contact, her fiery green eyes burning into the pillows they were lying on.

“Who took care of my daughter when I was stuck in space?” He whispered with a hint of pride, brushing his thumb against her cheek. She looked up at him, a small hint of defiance in her eyes, still unwilling to accept his praise. Was she hearing gratefulness? There was a warmth in his voice that made her suddenly nervous, and she bit her bottom lip. Nervousness was unfamiliar to the Black Widow. She’d sooner swallow the head of the source than allow herself to be seen as flustered. …not really a viable option here.

“Morgan is as much your daughter as she is mine,” Tony said finally. “You’ve raised her alongside me. I couldn’t have done this without you.”

Her eyes started to sting as tears threatened to spill. Judging by Tony’s glistening eyes, so were his.

“Thank you.”

Natasha closed her eyes and breathed. “You don’t have to-” She froze when she felt his lips on her forehead. His lips, slightly chapped, lingered for a little, before he pulled back. The spot burned as her cheeks did, and her heart threatened to break through her ribcage. She stopped breathing. Why was this happening? Displays of affection were no stranger to her, and she was thoroughly trained in physical manipulation, so there was no reason for her to have such a strong reaction to a damned kiss on the forehead.

The only problem was that this wasn’t a physical action, it was one of the soul. She could feel his sincerity and emotions in that kiss, and the silent message: “you are part of my family…if you’d like.” Tony seemed to sense her shock and pulled back.

“Um…Nat?” He asked cautiously. “Are you-”

It was her turn to interrupt him. She reached out and grabbed his shirt, pulling him in as their lips crashed together. She heard him breathe in sharply in surprise, but when she persisted, he melted into her embrace and reciprocated, fingers gently reaching into her hair and tangling themselves into her hair. She groaned as her lips moved against his, the pool of nerves in her belly raging like a bag of beaten snakes, as if she were a teenager again. She barely registered the feeling of spilt hot chocolate on her thighs when she hooked a thigh around Tony’s hips and straddled his waist. His hands roamed the curve of her back while her hands desperately explored every inch of his torso, all the while, the sounds of breathy moans and shifting sheets filled the air.

“Tony,” she gasped when she finally pulled away. She was an absolute sight, her lips swollen, her chest heaving and her cheeks red for a reason other than the alcohol. “Tony,” she repeated.

“Nat,” he answered her, hair messy and panting just as hard, and she soaked in the view, her heart thundering in her ears while her hazy green eyes roamed over his panting chest, the glow of the housing unit from under his shirt, and his piercing eyes, before resting on that infuriating smirk that was still on his lips. Natasha bit her cheek – she had to kiss it away.

Previous Chapter: Here

Next Chapter: Here

MasterList: Here

Tags: @littlemsstark3000 @katebishopofearth @black-ironwidow @ironwidow @ironwidoww @natashastarkotp @ironwidow10 @natashastark3000 @latinatasharomanoff @616tonesnat @natashastarkov @shipsomarvel @natasharomanoffhasmyheart @natashalieromanovs

Let me know if you wanna be tagged so I can alert you about future chapters^^

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wildlyminiaturesandwich · 5 years

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The Sims 4 Realm of Magic - Early Access CAS Review

Huge thank you to the EA Game Changer Program for providing me with the opportunity to play the Realm of Magic Game Pack early!

I have been quietly hoping for a long time that we would get some kind of Makin’ Magic style pack, so needless to say I was VERY happy when Realm of Magic was announced. I was even happier when the Gurus started “leaking” gameplay images, and completely ecstatic when the trailer came out! So you can imagine how psyched I was when we were given our early access codes and I could finally get in and look everything!

You all know by now how this works, right? If I like something, I generally can’t think of much else to say besides screaming at the top of my lungs “OMG I LOVE IT!”, and if I don’t like something I will straight up tell you guys and explain why... Yeh I’m looking at you Moschino reviews. So with this pack, there are a couple things I had issues with (not as many as Moschino lol) so if you don’t want to hear my nitpicky opinions about those things you can just skip straight to the "The Verdict” section at the bottom of each review.

As per usual, I’ll be posting both CAS and Build/Buy reviews, but instead of a gameplay review (because let’s face it, I never seem to be able to get around to that damn thing lol) this time around I’m going to be posting a short gameplay “story” instead, and will be voicing my opinions about certain things on the posts as it goes along. The gameplay won’t be all posted before the pack releases though, so...

Anon will be back on for the next few days so if you have any questions about Realm of Magic, feel free to send me an ask! ✨

See a preview of all the new CAS items here

I’m still a little uncertain how I feel about CAS as a whole. It has a lot of great stuff and it’s definitely worth having in my game, but it also has quite a few things I don’t like, things that (in my opinion) should have been included that weren’t, and the usual issues with some of the meshes/textures that continue to happen with every new pack.

✨The Hair

For some reason I was expecting more than five hairs? I don’t know why, but based on the trailers this pack seemed like it was going to have a lot more content than any other Game Pack, and it does to a certain degree... just not hairs; there are only five of them. Because let’s be honest, there might be six hairs in the catalogue, but they’re are only five new hairs... and one identical hair with coloured streaks.

Probably a completely unpopular opinion but I’m not a fan of this new trend of getting extra hairs with ombre and streaked textures, I’d rather leave that up to CC makers and have the Sims team work on more new meshes.

Which brings me to the only real issue I have with the hairs in this pack. The streaked version of the long braided hair is really weirdly textured in my opinion. The streaks start right at the hairline and haven’t been feathered/blended out into the rest of the hair very well so it kind of looks like when I accidentally add one of my accessory overlays to a hair it doesn’t belong on LOL

✨The Clothing

The clothing in this pack falls into two categories; Netflix Sabrina and Hand-me-down Winter Harry Potter. Normally that wouldn’t bother me, and in this case the clothing is really well made and looks great, but I do find myself a little disappointed by the lack of what I call “Comfy Casual” clothing.

This could be entirely just a me thing but much like me in real life, my sims rarely leave their homes, and I dunno how you live your life but I don’t walk around my home in fancy button-down shirts and dress pants and shoes. I wear leggings, a hoodie and slippers; and that’s provided I even bother to get out of my PJs that morning! I keep waiting for more comfy casual clothing to be added so my sims don’t have to get all dressed up just to sit around and play video games or finish off that novel they were writing.

But with the exception of a few things in this pack, everything is either ripped, leather, mesh, buckles, collars, or corsets. Which works really well with the whole magical theme of the pack, but spellcasters deserve to be comfy too! That’s not to say the clothes we got aren’t amazing though, they definitely are and I will definitely get a lot of use out of them!

But we all know I mostly talk about the issues I have in these reviews so let’s move on to them properly shall we?

Let’s go from left to right, starting with the drop-crotch pants. This one is quick and simple: can we all just agree that this is not a good look and move on please? It was bad enough in the 90s, we don’t need to be over here in 2019 looking like we’re wearing diapers, thanks.

Oh, key necklace... I was really looking forward to using you. Sadly, unless my sims have literally the smallest possible breasts hanging all the way down to their knees, you look like someone threw you in a fireplace to melt a while 😭

The yellow dress is another classic example of “Instagram vs Reality” meme that tends to happen with every pack. The dress looked really good in the trailers and promo images, but sadly looks butt in game.

The leather bodysuit is cool, huh? Yep, it’s definitely cool. The mesh looks good, the texture is really well done... oh what’s that? You want to wear leggings under it? Well you can’t, sorry. No leggings at all can be used with this bodysuit.

Up next we have the... ahem, Slave Bracelet. I promise you I tried to find a better name but this is the name it usually goes by and the only other one I could find, Harem Bracelet, wasn’t much better 😬 Not the point though! This bracelet/wrist cuff has some weird things happen when you pair it with an outfit that shouldn’t technically allow the bracelet to show up underneath it. As you can see in the example on the far left, with some long tees it doesn’t show the bracelet but still shows the specular for it, and in the image on the far right, with other long tops it kind of merges with mesh and flattens itself on top of them.

Next is one of my pet peeves with quite a few of the clothes in this pack; the addition of gloves, scarfs and other accessories to the outfit/top that should have either been made into their own separate meshes, or left out completely. That top in the image would have been really nice to wear during all seasons, but because of the gloves, it now only makes sense in the colder months.

Then we have the new makeup options, which I know isn’t clothing but shhh lol. It’s EA makeup... do I really need to say more? It probably wouldn’t look as bad if it weren’t so pixelated but whoever is in charge of creating makeup looks for this game needs to get in touch with @crypticsim ASAP ‘cause OOF!

And the last of the pics is something that has constantly bugged me about a lot of meshes in this game, all the way back to base game; why do they change the shape of my sims like that!? Like look at this comparison of my model sim with and without the outfit... WHY!? HOW!? WHY!?

Lastly... This is probably the biggest disappointment with this pack for me and I just don’t even know how to begin to describe how annoyed I am that ONCE AGAIN there is nothing for kids and toddlers. Zero. Zip. Nada. Not a damn thing. That’s two packs in a row with no new content for any sims under teen age and I just don’t get it. Moschino actually make kids and baby clothing! And with this pack, Gurus specifically mentioned that there was a special trait for sims who were born into spellcaster families...

SO WHY NO KIDS/TODDLER STUFF!? 😡

✨The Verdict

I know this all probably came off as sounding really negative, but as I said at the start, when I don’t like something I have a lot to say about it. But I do genuinely love the clothing, it fits the theme of the pack really well and most of it looks great. I just wish a little bit more attention had been paid to certain things, that there was more comfy casual stuff, and that kids and toddlers weren’t once again neglected.

All thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are my own. I am not paid by EA to “hype” their games; I am given the opportunity to review their games early in exchange for an honest review.

Click here for my Build/Buy Review

#The Sims 4 #Sims 4 #TS4 #EAGameChangers #TS4RealmOfMagic

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tokumusume · 4 years

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tokumusume’s list of best and worst movies and dramas watched in 2019:

There’s a new category this year. Inspired by kpopalypse, welcome the Honorable Mentions! Movies that weren’t exactly bad but also weren’t good. Movies and dramas are qualified to enter if I watched them for the first time this year, not that they were released this year. Click on ‘keep reading’~~

Best Movies:

1. Parasite

Another masterpiece from the director of Snowpiercer (let’s pretend Okja never existed). A poor family con their way to a rich household. Choi Woo-Shik from The Witch (see below) is the eldest son and mastermind, fabulous as always. Definitely the best movie of this year. For me, movie of the decade.

2. The Witch Part 1 The Subversion

This movie is amazing, hard to describe without spoilers. A perfect mix of Stranger Things and Hanna. Choi Woo-Shik can come to my house and kick my ass anytime. I can’t wait for part two.

3. Death Trance

Visually stunning, kinda like Amemiya Keita’s style in early Garo or Mad Max. I wish the movie was longer and the characters were better fleshed out, Ryuen the monk and the little girl had so much potential... The most interesting thing about this movie is how sexualized the main male character is compared to the female ones, and apparently, the swords were designed to look like veiny penises (can’t find a source for this info), and yes, they do look like veiny penises. The final showdown is heavy with sexual energy. Have I already said that Ryuen deserved better? #RyuenRights

4. Gintama 2: Rules are made to be broken

The barber shop scene is a fucking cinematic masterpiece. I never laughed so much like I did with this movie. The way it doesn’t take itself seriously, the meta jokes, everything is perfect. Even better than the first one.

5. Kingdom

While I think that some fight scenes were way too long (like the bamboo forest one), the dynamics between Shin and Hyou/Eisei were highly entertaining, at least in my shipper eyes. I like that (SPOILER) the King of the Mountain People is a woman and not once they try to call her Queen. She is a King. Hashimoto Kanna is adorable as a Ten, Kanata Hongo does a great job as Eisei’s psycho brother, Sakaguchi Tak waves his sword around, the usual stuff but with added layers of dirt and sweat.

6. Bravestorm

A movie I lovingly call “Japanese Pacific Rim”. Full of Kamen Rider stars (Hino Eiji! Misuzawa Haruka! That girl from Heisei Generations, the one with a sword! She has a sword in this as well!) and giant robots (god, I love giant robots!), I waited so much for this movie and it exceeded my expectations. I just wish I could’ve watched in theaters, it had a limited showing in my country.

7. Twelve Suicidal Children

What begins as a murder mystery ends with a twist you won’t see coming. All of the actors are amazing, but special mention to Sugisaki Hana and that guy from that one boy group I forgot the name but can’t be bothered to Google.

8. Gakkou Gurashi

Four girls and their teacher try to survive the zombie apocalypse trapped inside the school. This one destroyed me for days.

9. Forest of Love

I’ve watched some Sono Sion movies but nothing prepared me for this. Be aware of extremely gory sequences and sensitive topics. Hinami Kyoko is so amazing as blue-haired, punk girl crush Taeko that I totally didn’t notice she was AkibaBlue in Akibaranger.

10. The Host

After watching Parasite I decided to go on a Bong Joon Ho binge and watched this horror movie. Not as good as Snowpiercer and Parasite in my opinion but heart-wrenching nevertheless. The little girl is the star of the movie.

11. The Hungry Lion

A story about the dangers of social media and slut-shaming. I want to punch Mizuishi Atom in the face.

12. Cromartie High

A little absurd comedy about yakuza-style high school boys (played by middle-aged men lol) forming a club to battle aliens summoned by themselves just because. It made me laugh like a child. A hidden gem.

Honorable Mentions:

1. River’s Edge

Depressing as fuck. Warning: the cats die. It’s not graphic but it’s traumatizing. Yoshizawa Ryo is a gay boy who sleeps with old men for money. There’s a graphic sex scene (not Yoshizawa, sadly) where my only thought was “That thing is gonna get stuck in there! Use a condom!” Can’t remember much from it except for these three scenes.

2. The Disastrous Life of Saiki K

Yamazaki Kento has the acting chops of a dead fish but it comes handy for playing a teen with psychic abilities and zero social skills. Hashimoto Kanna is one of the prettiest girls in Japan. Yoshizawa Ryo with white and blueish hair looks more like Sakata Gintoki than Oguri Shun in the Gintama live action. The end is a huge let down but the fun ride is worth it.

3. Ano ko no, Toriko

Congratulations to Yoshizawa Ryo, he has FIVE movies in my list of favorite movies this year! This is to make up for crowning GIVER as the biggest waste of time of 2018, this list is totally not biased, lol. “Ano ko” could be just another romance movie but the (very) little insight into how the entertainment industry works and not focusing on school life made me love it. Poor Sugino Yosuke being left behind again, when will this boy get the main girl?

4. Monstrum

It doesn’t reinvent the wheel but it’s pleasant enough to fill a rainy afternoon with a lot of blood and spilled guts. Hyeri of Girl’s Day is the heroine and Choi Woo Shik is the commander she falls in love with.

5. Weirdo Go

I confess I watched this one just to see Ji Li (aka my snake son Nie Huaisang) dressed as a woman but it was enjoyable and not that problematic.

6. Real - Kanzen Naru Kubinagaryu no Hi

Directed by the same guy that did “Creepy” and “Before we vanish”, there are lots of twists you won’t see coming. And a dinosaur. A fucking dinosaur.

7. Tomodachi Game: The Final

The movie loses its focus halfway through then picks up again minutes before ending. Yoshizawa Ryo delivers again as the sadistic Yuuichi, much like his role in Gintama. The plot twists are the star of the movie.

8. The Living Dead

Sorry Wen Ning. I saw the plot twist coming in the first 30 minutes of the movie, not very smart of the writer. His personality did a 180° turn for worse and I’ll demote the movie to an honorable mention for it. Gao Han is cute though, I would like to see him as a better character.

9. Backstreet Girls

Some recycled scenes from the drama to situate the viewers, a completely new story for the movie, it is certainly funny and enjoyable, if you can get past the forced gender reassignment surgery background and transphobic jokes (you shouldn’t get past it btw). I like the soundtrack.

Best Dramas:

1. The Untamed

Do I need to say more?

2. The Tale of Nokdu

This Korean romance had everything to be a mess but it wasn’t!!! *claps* I don’t hate the main female character and the whole palace politics actually kept me interested until the end. The complete shift of atmosphere mid-season was strange at first but ultimately very welcomed.

3. The Naked Director

Netflix original Japanese content is amazing. This one is a look at the life of a legendary porn director in the late 80s, I learned a lot about the history of Japanese porn and censorship (yay pixels!) and went looking for his, erm, works. Very graphic, 69/10 don’t recommend watching with people in the house.

4. Channel wa Sonomama!

I don’t remember it well but it’s about a news station and what is like to be a journalist and it was very interesting and funny.

5. SCAMS

Forgettable. Sugino Yosuke with black hair cons old people via phone calls.

Worst Movies and Dramas:

1. The cat in their arms

The cats spend 90% of the movie in human forms, and halfway through it they simply abandon the cats’ plot to show a fucking long montage of a weird guy painting a picture of a nude girl. It’s also super creepy to see a grown-up man acting like a cat, getting belly rubs and eating cat food from a bowl. Yoshizawa needs to choose his roles more wisely.

2. Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun

A waste of Suda Masaki’s talent. Can Japan stop casting Tsuchiya Tao already?

3. Samurai Marathon

Almost two hours of dirty men running through a forest. Maybe Japanese History experts will enjoy it, because I certainly didn’t.

4. Lady Vengeance

While there are legit great moments, I didn’t find this “classic” to be anything special. The animal cruelty was too much for me.

5. Hot Gimmick

This movie makes Bohemian Rhapsody’s editing look like a work of art. There are more flashing cuts than a T-ARA music video. I have no idea who likes who, who’s banging who, what even are they saying. Too much poetic shit for my like. I wanted to see Shimizu Hiroya naked. I was bamboozled.

6. The Divine Fury

While some parts were interesting, at the end I still don’t know if the protagonist is possessed by a demon (if yes, then why would he help a priest destroy his friends?) or if he was blessed by God when his father died and talked to him (the glowing hand thing, why and how??). The exorcism parts are really, really scary, or maybe I’m just a chicken, but I had to avert my eyes. The best (only) part is that the protagonists are hot. Hello Woo Do-Hwan, you can sacrifice me to Satan any time…

#tokumusume awards #2019 #Parasite #Gintama #The Untamed #The Tale of Nokdu #Yoshizawa Ryo #long post #jdrama #kdrama #jmovie #kmovie #cdrama #cmovie

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fairyroses · 5 years

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How Do I Make Gifs? - A Photoshop CC Giffing Tutorial

(for @elektrawwf, and anyone else interested in how I make gifs I guess, lol)

So, I feel like I should preface this by saying that I'm certainly no expert on this, nor am I a Professional Giffer™, but I’ve been making gifs for a few years now, and have developed a pretty standard system for doing so. Hopefully it works for you like it’s worked for me! :)

Basic Tutorial Steps:

Step 1 - Recording the scene you want to gif

Step 2 - Importing, deleting, and cropping your gif frames

Step 3 - Adding adjustment layers

Step 4 - Resizing your gif and setting the frame delay

Step 5 - Converting and sharpening your gif

Step 6 - Trimming and saving your gif

BONUS STEP - Adding text (OPTIONAL)

Programs Used/Needed:

- QuickTime Player

- Photoshop CC 2018

The finished gif that I’ll be making:

This tutorial is VERY screenshot-heavy, so the rest of it will be below the cut. Happy giffing!

STEP 1 - Recording the scene you want to gif.

All gifs start as videos. I use the Screen Recording feature on QuickTime Player to create videos of whatever scenes I want to gif. If you have a Mac, you can find QuickTime in the Applications folder:

Right click, then select New Screen Recording.

You can then play the scene you want to gif on your computer, and your screen with the video on it will be recorded. Hit the stop button when you want to end the recording, and then save the video.

It’s best to not record more than a minute or two at a time - basically, just record the exact scene that you’re looking for - because the longer the video is, the harder it’ll be to select the portion of it that you need for giffing.

You can technically screen-record any type of video, but I (and most giffers) vastly prefer videos that are 1080p, which is the best kind of HD. That’s why I usually don’t gif things unless I can find them either on Netflix, Youtube (in HD) or the CW site (or NBC, CBS, whatever). There are definitely other (less legal) ways to get your hands on HD videos, but I’m just not super comfortable using those lol.

That being said, 720p videos are usually okay for smaller (268px-wide) gifs - they’re just less ideal (I wouldn’t really recommend using them to make 540px-wide gifs, but you can still technically do it).

STEP 2 - Importing, deleting, and cropping your gif frames.

Now that you have your video, you have to import it into Photoshop. Once you open Photoshop, you need to go to File > Import, then select Video Frames to Layers.

A window will pop up, where you can set the amount of frames that you want Photoshop to import, and select the exact section of the video that you want to import. Here are my settings:

The two little toggles below the video are meant to be dragged around, and you use them to section out the specific Range of the video that you want to turn into a gif. Once you have all of this set up to your liking, hit OK.

NOTE: The selection of Limit To Every 4 Frames is more my personal preference than anything else. If you want Really Smooth Gifs, then you can uncheck that box and simply import every single frame in your Selected Range. This is what High Quality Giffers always say to do. Unfortunately, while those gifs do end up really smooth, they also end up being really short, which I don’t particularly like.

So basically, I’m personally willing to sacrifice some smoothness in favor of an increased gif length, but you do NOT have to do that if you don’t want to. Choose whichever option you like best - these Steps work no matter which one you do. (We’ll come back to this later though, once we get to setting the frame delay in Step 4).

Okay, back to the tutorial.

Once the scene is imported, you can delete any extraneous frames at the beginning and end of the frame animation Timeline, which can be found at the bottom of the screen.

As you can see, I have the first 6 frames selected. Those are the ones I ended up deleting (among some others at the end of the Timeline).

You can also go to the Layers panel on the right, and delete the corresponding layers from there, once you’ve deleted the frames. This isn’t technically necessary, but it might help free up some computing space if you’re deleting a lot of frames.

Next, you need to click the Selection Tool in the top left corner of the screen. Then, set your selection preferences (circled below) as follows:

Style: Fixed Ratio

Width: 540

Height: 250

This is specifically the ratio to set for a 540 x 250px sized gif, which are the dimensions of the example gif I’m making. If you want to place two gifs beside each other in a gifset, each gif needs to be 268px wide. (The heights can be whatever you want them to be.)

Use the Selection Tool to select the area that you want to be your gif, and then go to Image > Crop.

STEP 3 - Adding adjustment layers.

Now it’s time to make your gif look pretty™. For this part, you’ll be using the Adjustments panel above the Layers panel.

Adjustments will affect all the layers below it, so you want to make sure that your adjustment layers are placed above all of your gif layers.

These are the adjustment layers that I used for this specific gif, but they’re also just generally the same three adjustments that I use for every gif I make. (I also usually add a Hue/Saturation adjustment to my gifs, which I set to +15 Saturation, but since this scene was already so heavily saturated, it didn’t need it.)

Here are the specifications for the Brightness/Contrast and Levels adjustment layers:

Regarding the Curves adjustment layer (pictured below), if you click on the RGB dropdown menu, you can single out specific colors in order to color-correct the gif, which I did here (by removing a lot of extra reds and yellows).

While these are good general adjustment examples, just take note that the values pictured here won’t be exactly the same for every gif, and you need to toggle and play around with them to make every new gif look its best.

Here’s the example scene before any adjustments:

And here’s the scene after my adjustments:

STEP 4 - Resizing your gif and setting the frame delay.

To resize your gif, go to Image > Image Size, and then change the gif’s width (in this example, I change the gif’s width to 540px).

As long as Resample is checked the you’re working with Pixels, the gif should resize properly. Hit OK.

Next, to change the Frame Delay of the gif (basically how fast it goes), look for this button in the right corner of your Timeline, then click it and Select All Frames.

Once all the frames are selected, you can hit one of the little downward arrows next to the 0.02 values, and select Other.

Now you can set your new frame delay. I always set my delay to 0.09 seconds, which produces gifs that are a bit slower than the Professional Gif Standard™. This is due to a combination of personal preference (I just like slower gifs) and an effort to maintain as much smoothness as possible, given how I choose to import my frames.

NOTE: Remember the NOTE from Step 2? Now, if you chose to import every frame, rather than “Every 4 Frames” like I do, then you should set your frame delay to 0.04.

Doing so will produce a final gif that looks like this:

Notice how this gif is smoother and faster, but also shorter than my example gif? Yeah. Like I said, whichever style of gif you choose to make is up to your own preference.

STEP 5 - Converting and sharpening your gif.

You never quite realize how blurry a gif really is until you Sharpen it. To do this, you first need to convert your Timeline from a Frame Animation to a solid Timeline. You can do this by making sure all your frames are still selected, and then clicking the Convert to Timeline button in the bottom left corner of the Timeline.

Now your Timeline should look purple, like it does in the picture below.

Next, you need to select all of your layers (MINUS the adjustment layers) on the right side of the screen. Once all of your layers are selected, go to Filter > Convert for Smart Filters.

Once your gif layers have been compressed into a Smart Object (see circle below), you can select Filter > Sharpen > Smart Sharpen.

The first time you select Smart Sharpen, you need to set all the parameters for it. But once you do that the first time, you shouldn’t have to set them again. Basically, make sure your window looks exactly like this one:

Then hit OK.

You’re going to do this TWICE (so you’re going to end up with TWO Smart Sharpen layers below your Smart Object layer). Then, you need to click the button to the right of the top Smart Sharpen layer, and change the opacity of that layer to 30%. (Otherwise, your gif will be way over-sharpened.)

STEP 6 - Trimming and saving your gif.

You’re almost done! It’s time to save your gif.

To save a gif, you must go to File > Export > Save For Web (Legacy).

However, this gif has a problem.

This number in the bottom left corner of the Save For Web window tells you the current size of your gif. As you can see, this gif’s size is currently 3.541 MB. That size wouldn’t be a problem if you were intending to upload this gif to Twitter, because Twitter has a gif size limit of 5 MB.

Tumblr, however, only has a size limit of 3 MB. So, to get your gif to work on tumblr, you need to Trim it.

Trimming is the process of changing the length of a gif without actually deleting any part of it permanently. This gives you the freedom to edit your gif and pick the portion of it that you like best.

You can easily trim your gif in the Timeline, by clicking the dragging the Gray Sliders at each end of it (see the arrows below). Wherever you leave the stoppers will become the new beginning and end of the gif. You can make this process more precise by using the Blue Slider (circled below) to choose where you want your stopper to go before you drag it there.

The Timeline pictured here has already been trimmed.

Trimming your gif will often require some trial and error. Whenever you want to check the length of your gif, simply go to Save For Web again and check the amount of MBs in your gif. (Click Cancel if your gif is still too big.)

Once your gif falls below 3 MB, you can finally save it!

The last thing you need to do before saving is change your Looping Options from Once to Forever in the bottom right corner of the window. Then, click Save.

You now officially have a finished gif!

Mine looks like this:

BONUS STEP - Adding text (OPTIONAL)

Now, I’ve just shown you how to make and save a gif. But what if you want to add text to that gif? I’ll show yow how to do that too.

First off, you should only add text after the rest of your gif is completely done and ready to be saved (basically, once you’ve already completed Steps 1-5). Then, before you save it, you can click on the Text button on the left side of the screen.

Click on the gif to create a new Text layer, and then type whatever you want. Generally, dialogue captions are placed in the middle of a gif towards the bottom, while other, more artistic types of Text can go wherever you want.

Now that you have a Text layer, you want to make sure of a few things. First, make sure that your Text layer is your TOP layer on the right side of the screen, above all of the Adjustment layers.

Next, you want to make sure that your Text layer spans your entire gif Timeline. Notice how my Text layer (depicted as a purple rectangle in the Timeline) doesn’t reach the Gray Slider on the left? To fix this, simply click and drag the Text layer until it extends past both Gray Sliders.

And finally, I always add Effects to my Text. You can do this by hitting the fx button in the bottom right of your screen. Specifically, I use the Stroke and Drop Shadow effects to make my gif stand out from whatever background it happens to be on.

My Stroke is always set to 1px thick, and my Drop Shadow settings are as follows:

As a final note, if you want your text to look exactly like mine, then you need to use the font Myriad Pro in size 14, which I then italicize and bold. You can also open Window > Characters, and make sure that your preferences look like this:

ALRIGHT. Now that you’ve added your extra text, you can FINALLY go to Step 6 and save your gif.

Now, your finished gif should look like this:

I hope this tutorial was helpful! I tried to be as thorough as possible to avoid any confusion, but if you have any additional questions, you should always feel free to ask me!

Have fun giffing!! :)

#my tutorials #my gifs #idk what else to tag this lol #gif tutorial #personal shit #long post #I'm so sorry to anyone on mobile with no read more

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minijeong · 5 years

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hey! I absolutely adore your gifs and was wondering if you would be willing to give a tutorial or something on how you do them, ive been wanting to start making my own but I’m finding it real difficult. If not that’s fine, have a good day! :)

hi - of course!

shinyunas/nctmark/izonechu made a good tutorial here: https://itzy.cf/post/186759375366/hi-do-you-have-any-tutorials-for-how-to-make

i pretty much do the same thing, but i’ll just list a few things i do differently/would like to mention!

1. i sharpen in photoshop and clean/denoise using topaz (u would need to torrent this and can probably google a tutorial for it from tumblr). it’s honestly just a personal preference thing to not use vapoursynth. i tried it before here but it didn’t really suit me! i also try not to use topaz clean as often as possible because (a) it takes double the time and (b) i realized this also doesn’t suit me! however when a video clip is not hd or i need to zoom in a lot, i use topaz clean to try making up for the pixelation. i also avoid using clean at all costs when it’s not a closeup because it makes faces look weird if they are too small imo. you’ll have to play around with the settings to see what you think looks best. the only ‘right’ way to do it is whatever you like the most c: –> applies to everything here!

2. color and adjustment layers are really what makes ur style and they make gifs stand out. personally i first white balance using levels or curves. then i adjust saturation/vibrance and use selective color and hue/saturation to adjust the levels of each color. careful with the saturation because high saturation can end up highlighting the dither of the gif. at the end, before sharpening and what not, i add solid color layers and play around with them depending on the color scheme im going for. i like using hue/soft light/overlay/multiply/difference or a combination of those and play around with opacity. if u dont know what something does, google and watch some videos on it. don’t use tools without knowing what they are for because you might change other things unknowingly that may affect your gif later. you can also use other people’s psds if you want, but i personally think each gif needs a diff coloring. i’ve only downloaded psds in the past if i really wanted to figure out how someone got a certain vibe off

3. before the color adjustment, i delete unwanted layers, convert to video timeline, and turn all frames into one smart object. after adding adjustments, i apply the sharpen/topaz filters to the smart layer. dont play the gif after u put topaz on… ur computer will glitch out LOL. convert frames > flatten frames into clips to get ur post filter frames. then delete non-visible layers and convert back into frame animation timeline. (i hope i got the names of these right lmao i set shortcuts for everything so i dont click any menu for anything LOL)

if i need to blur out words - after filtering i would convert it into a smart layer again. then use marquee tool to choose the area with the words/logos and 1.3 gaussian blur it (i prefer 1.3 because it’s just enough for me to not notice it but not so much that the blur stands out… once again personal preference!)

4. my export settings

i use different sorting depending on what i need to know e.g. if the gif is too big i can sort by popularity or hue and try to take out colors that don’t affect the gif that much. (for some reason my gifs need to be below 2.85MB to upload on tumblr lol)

5. just keep making gifs and have fun! it’s honestly hard at first, takes a lot of time, and can be a pain in the ass. here’s my first gifset on this acc lol https://joyuls.tumblr.com/post/181169072903/la-vie-en-rose-eunbi-mama-in-hong-kong-2018. definitely not my greatest work, but i guess it reminds me that i worked hard haha. but as long as you enjoy the process instead of the results, it’ll be worth it, and your gifs will start looking a lot better before you know it. hope to see your content around soon, and feel free to ask more questions if you have!!

#anon #replies #ps help #thanks for stopping by <3

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phan-of-the-pen · 5 years

Text

I Dare You To Stay: Chapter 19

hope you enjoyed the fluff this is SAD

Tags for chapter: MAJOR angst, talk/mentions of depression/mental health issues, minor issues of self worth

Words for chapter: ~2.5 k

Fic Summary: Dan Howell is a barista working a shitty job, frequenting his shitty apartment, and living a shitty existence, hiding his asexuality and going for a PHD in self-depreciation and depression. Phil Lester is a part-time intern, part-time employee at a local weather station, trying to get experience in his field and make a name for himself, while juggling a second job at the nearby Tesco’s to give him some financial breathing room. Their paths were never supposed to meet, but what happens when they do anyways, one rainy day in Manchester?

(ao3!)

<– Previous chapter Next chapter -->

~~~~~~~~~~

Dan ignored yet another buzz from the phone in his pocket. Like the past four this morning, this message would too be from Phil, and Dan just couldn't bring himself to look at them.

All of the texts boiled down to Phil trying to make up his absence to Dan, but Dan just wasn't in the mood to try and pretend to be anything but exhausted. His limbs were heavy and his heart was slowly numbing. Phil leaving was only part of the problem, but Dan just couldn't bring himself to shoulder it at the moment.

Phil was spending the next few days shadowing a retired but incredibly knowledgeable meteorologist. Dr. Mathers had worked with the weather station Phil was a part of for decades, and he had earned several awards for his work. He was more qualified in retirement than some of the meteorologists that were currently working in the bigger stations, and taking the time to learn from him was an opportunity that both Phil and the station couldn't pass up.

Normally, Dan would be just as excited and happy as Phil about something like this, but recently getting out of bed was an uphill struggle. He felt horrible about not being as outwardly supportive as he should have been, and he didn't know how to make it up to Phil. Even if he did, he wasn't so sure that he would be able to go through with anything, not with how much his mental health was crumbling in his hands.

It was the beginning of the second week in the new year. Jaime had left nearly two weeks ago on the 8AM train back to London on New Year's Day, and her departure had carved a deep chasm in Dan's soul. As angsty and emo as it sounded, he didn't have another way to describe how he felt. She had been going back and forth for what seemed like so long, and those two weeks that she had spent in Manchester had been almost solely devoted to just the two of them. Dan had been rendered nearly breathless with the realization of how much he had missed Jaime, and he had greedily drunk up every moment they spent together in the vain attempt at sedating an endless desire to be around her.

What he had failed to account for was how alone he felt now that she was gone; it was like he was missing his arms, or his legs. And it wasn't like he was entirely without her. They would text and Facetime, and he would skype her whenever they had the chance, but it was nothing like the real thing. Jaime wasn't meant to be simplified to just the pixels on his screen. In a way, her absence now hurt even more than her initial series of trips back and forth from Manchester to London.

Before Jaime's Christmas break, Dan had survived the separation by spending his spare time with Phil. Their blossoming relationship ended up flourishing because of it, and Dan was extremely grateful for how much they ended up strengthening the foundation that their relationship was built upon. These past two weeks have done nothing up test that foundation, however.

Phil had cancelled so many of their shared plans that Dan had only seen him twice in the past two weeks, and neither of those times were longer than half an hour stops at the coffee shop. Both of the two times that he and Dan had seen each other Phil had promised Dan that he would stay for at least an hour, but by the time twenty or thirty minutes were up his phone would ring and Phil would drop everything to answer it outside. After talking animatedly on the phone with a frown for ten to fifteen minutes Phil would reappear and shake his head. He'd chug down the rest of his coffee and walk out the door. "I'm really sorry, Dan, but I have to go. It's work." Phil was also only answering maybe half of the texts that Dan sent him, and he had acted horribly distant in the few and strained interactions the two had had.

Dan was as hurt as he was worried. Phil was shutting him out from something, and Dan wanted to be there for his boyfriend and smooth out the stressed creases in his forehead and surround him in a soothing hug. At the same time Dan was suffering from severe anxiety about the whole thing. He had never had the chance to talk to Phil about how he had been hurt from being shut out before, and now didn't seem like a good time.

He couldn't turn to Jaime because she was busy with the play, and he didn't want to spoil one of their few talks with his relationship problems. Good things to drown out the bad things was what he wanted right now, so talking to Jaime about this was out of the question. He couldn't lean on his boyfriend because Phil was not only dealing with something on his own, but currently all of their conversations were giving Dan skin-crawling anxiety with every terse word Phil gave him.

Dan didn't even have Mary.

She had been in the coffee shop once in the past three weeks, and it had been to tell Dan and Jaime that she wouldn't be around for a little. She needed a surgery to finally get some help for her bad knee, and she wouldn't be able to make the trip to the coffee shop for two months in her old age.

Part of Dan was happy to know why she had been acting strange a few weeks ago, but another part of him was sad and upset that he wasn't going to be seeing her for a while.

While Dan would never concern her with a problem of this magnitude, he would have killed to get even one morning with her. A little "Good morning, Daniel!" would have made his whole week, especially in the midst of all of this crap.

Dan unlocked the door to the coffee shop and flicked on the lights. He tossed his jacket into the break room and immediately and mechanically started to set up for the day.

He shovelled coffee grounds into one of the brew machines and slumped against the counter as he waited. His stomach grumbled a little as coffee started to permeate the air, but he didn't make a move to try and fix it. He hadn't eaten since his pitiful dinner of a slice of old pizza last night, and considering the fact that he didn't bring a lunch with him, it wouldn't be until he got home until he possibly would eat again.

Dan could just grab something from the case—they were allowed to—or even stop in one of the many shops up and down the street, but he didn't care if he didn't eat.

He didn't care about a lot right now.

Dan scrubbed at his face, exhausted in many more ways than just physical.

He had seen his therapist a few days ago, and she had warned him that he needed to try and prevent himself from falling further down this hole he was spiraling down, but Dan didn't really take her advice to heart. When he crawled out from this latest depressive episode he knew he would regret not listening to her, but right now he was empty and lonely, and that voice in the back of his head was too loud for him to ignore.

He didn't have his boyfriend. He didn't have his best friend. He didn't have Mary. He was all alone.

And it hurt. More than he could try and articulate, really.

~~~~~

Dan pushed the bag of crisps away from him, his minuscule appetite already gone. He wrapped the blanket around his body tighter and stared blankly at his television screen. One of the series he had been watching with Phil had uploaded a two hour season finale, but Dan wasn't absorbing a single second of what was being played. His stomach grumbled, but Dan only frowned and buried deeper into the blanket. He really didn't want food right now.

He didn't really want anything right now.

No, that was a lie.

He wanted someone. He didn't care if it was Jaime or Phil, or anyone else, but he needed some kind of human contact. Dan desperately wanted someone to help him pull himself out of his head space.

Dan slipped his phone out of his pocket and unlocked it. He had two unread texts from Phil that had accumulated since the last time that Dan had checked his phone a few hours ago. He ignored them for now and brought up the thread he and Jaime had.

> To: my maraschino cherry are u around?

It was close to an hour before Jaime responded. Even with her uncharacteristically late reply, Dan's heart still soared. He clicked on the new text.

> From: my maraschino cherry [multimedia message]

at a party rn. we did our first run of the whole set today! so we're celebrating lmao

anyways

did you need something? I can easily duck into a room, np danny

The picture attached was one of Jaime in what looked like someone's lounge. The whole thing was a little blurry, but Dan could easily see the sheer happiness on his best friend's face. Her arm was around an attractive blonde, their faces pressed together as they both widely and drunkenly looked into the camera.

Dan instantly felt guilty for bothering Jaime. She was having so much fun. There was no reason for him to not only ask her to momentarily leave the party to talk to him, but to also trouble her with the knowledge that he was rapidly slipping into a deep depressive episode. It would kill her mood and make her needlessly worry about him.

She deserved to be happy.

Dan quickly typed out his reply and sent it, backing out almost immediately.

> To: my maraschino cherry no dw! i just was wondering if u had time to talk lol. have fun! dont get TOO drunk ;)

Dan stared at his text chat with Phil. He read over the last two texts he had missed from his boyfriend, and bit his lip, trying to decide if he should bother Phil.

Phil hadn't directly seen what Dan's depressive episodes could come to. Jaime had been in the trenches with Dan, and even though she had never seen what they looked like behind locked doors and closed blinds until not too long ago, she had picked up his pieces after every one and was all too aware of the damage they did to Dan's mental and physical health. Phil knew the general gist of it from the few details Dan had given him, but there was no doubt that Phil would be in way over his head trying to handle Dan. Not to mention trying to deal with him in a depressive episode this strong.

Dan was also all too aware of how worried Phil would be over him, and Dan knew for a fact that no matter how far Phil pulled away from him, if Dan told Phil about this mounting problem Phil wouldn't be able to think straight until he could make sure Dan was okay with his own two eyes. It would put him off of his game for the whole week, and Dan didn't want to derail this important trip for Phil before it really began. This was an opportunity for Phil that Dan was determined not to ruin.

Frowning, Dan closed out of the messaging app. Almost instantly he reopened it again. His therapist had pointed out to him several times that he struggled with accepting and asking for help, and that he needed to let people into his life more if he wanted to get better. This was one of those instances, right? So shouldn't he talk to someone?

Dan drafted a message and deleted it. He tried again but only erased it as well. Dan groaned and nearly clicked the screen of his phone off out of frustration.

One more time…

Dan left this third attempt devoid of anything that would suggest that Dan was in trouble. In fact, it was very simple to what he had initially sent Jaime.

> To: Phil Lester (is amazing!!) hey, do u think we could talk?

After sending it, Dan felt a bit better. Even if he never gathered the courage to admit to Phil that he was in a bad place and that it would only get worse, he was confident that talking to Phil would make his spirits soar. It wasn't a miracle cure, but it would soothe the worst of the mind-numbing loneliness and depression deep in his bones.

Except Dan watched as the hours ticked by and his phone remained quiet and dark. When Dan blinked back into reality it was nearing 2AM. His Netflix show had long since expired, and there wasn't as much as a twitter notification on his phone. Dan dragged himself to his bed even though he knew that it was doubtful that he would sleep tonight.

Meanwhile, something hard had settled in the furthest reaches of Dan's chest. It made breathing difficult and his brain take three times as long to process even the smallest things. It had admittedly been a while since he had been last acquainted with it, but it was familiar. Sickly comforting in the sense that it was something he was so used to. In a way, it was like coming home.

When it was time to get up and get ready for work, Dan got ready on complete impulse. He was too busy dissociating to even remember the walk there, and was mildly surprised when he found himself stocking the cash register on muscle memory alone.

That was one thing that was different with this depressive episode, it seemed. Ever since he had first started to fall into this predicament about a week ago, he had buried himself in work. He took extra shifts in the coffee shop and even sometimes stayed overtime. Coming from someone who normally shut down in every way in the deepest caverns of his depression, the behavior was horribly different from what he was used to. Maybe it was because this depressive episode was caused by something different.

Before, they had been caused by his longing for things he didn't have: a family, a lover, acceptance, someone (or a group of people) who loved him and he could love in return. After he was kicked out and he found Jaime, they slowly became fewer and farther in between as he and Jaime became inseparable. Even though they were still there, he could manage them.

Dan had never had a depressive episode triggered by an all-consuming, numbing sense of being utterly and completely alone before.

Something deep in his gut did he have the feeling that this one would not be his last.

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